My Aquarian grandmother, Phyllis Mansfield, was a small-time gambler. She would match her dreams with numbers in a dream guide and used them to place bets on a not-yet-legal lottery system run by the mob in our city of Chelsea, Massachusetts. This was in the 70s when Nana worked the register at Gorin’s, the department store in Bellingham Square. Upon waking, my grandmother — a woman plagued by an anxiety disorder, her "nerves," that would see her hospitalized as well as a sharp sixth sense that manifested largely through prophetic dreams — would grab the Lucky Number Dream Book that lived at her bedside and strain to recall her fading dreams, matching elements with the numbers in the book. Dreamed of a cat? There’s a number for that. Dreamed of a witch, a wolf, a game? The book encouraged you to match these themes to their numbers and take those numbers to your bookie. Nana’s bookie would swing by Gorin’s Department Store, checking in with the women running the registers to see if they had any lucky numbers they wanted to put some money on. This being a time before the state-run Massachusetts Lottery, the numbers were selected from horse or dog races, and the Mafia lackey would later swing back through the shops, distributing winnings. 

My Nana picked up her Lucky Number Dream Book from the newsrack at the local pharmacy. Often printed with covers featuring racial caricatures of mystical Black women or Asian men, many of the Lucky Number Dream Books originated in Harlem, produced by working psychics growing their empires with lines of mystical merchandise (see the excellent Sex Workers, Psychics, and Numbers Runners: Black Women in New York City’s Underground Economy by LaShawn Harris). The tradition of matching dream images with numbers seems to have originated in Italy, but like many mystical traditions, its provenance is hazy.

I decide to record my own dreams, match the themes with the numbers listed in various online Lucky Number Dream Guides, and play the California Lottery. It feels very lucky that this project begins, through no special planning, on the eve of my grandmother’s birthday, February 11. 

Asleep in my bed, I dream that I am in Mexico, standing at a train station after traveling down a long, dirt road by car. The station is clamoring with people. I feel both embarrassed and desperate when I realize that I only have American dollars to pay for my ride. The man at the counter is annoyed but lets me pay in U.S. currency, a total of $89 for two tickets, one for me and one for my dead ex-girlfriend Laura, who in my dream is both alive and my paramour. I wake up with that strange, sweet feeling that a friend has visited me from beyond, and wonder if Laura is watching over my otherworldly gambling projects. She was an avid member of the underground bingo ring I operated out of my shabby Victorian flat in the 90s! I send a please and thank you out to her spirit, and the spirit of my grandmother, and any additional benevolent spirits who might be hanging out, and I head off to Hollywood, where I am having a staycation at the Hotel Roosevelt, a reportedly haunted place that once housed Marilyn Monroe, where Carole Lombard and Clark Gable once staged their illicit hook-ups, where the ghost of Montgomery Clift reportedly stalks the halls.

That evening, my boyfriend and I leave the property and walk down Sunset Boulevard, toward the 7-Eleven near Hollywood High School. Having never played the lotto, I throw myself upon the mercy of the cashier, who is adorable with a lot of eyeliner and twin buns like animal ears on her head (the same hairdo Laura would wear!) and directs me to a lotto stand at the back of the store. Although the Lucky Number Dream Books my Nana used are still in print, I’d found some free websites that claimed to help me turn my dreams into cash. I started with paranormalauthority.com and looked up some numbers based on my dream the night before: I got 10 for train, 51 for car, and 2 for money. There was no entry for dirt road, but I found 17 for rural. I still needed two more numbers to play, so I used my birthday, 18, and my kid’s, 22. 

Life felt elevated after placing my bet. Maybe it was having a new little something to look forward to, the simple novelty of a fresh project. I tucked my slip, printed with my dreamy numbers, into the little leather purse that used to belong to my grandmother, knowing that it certainly had once held her own hopeful slips. 

I’d asked the woman at the 7-Eleven how I’d find out if I’d hit it big, and she seemed a little unsure. I could come back and scan my barcode, or I could get a California lotto app. I remembered being quite little, no older than first grade, and sitting with my mother in the parlor as she awaited the lotto’s reveal on the evening news. What was lottery, I asked my mom. As part of her explanation, she prompted me to come up with my own selection of numbers. As the anchorman recited the evening’s win my mother gasped and immediately phoned my grandmother. Had we actually played my numbers, we would have hit. 

There is in my family a longing for luck that borders on the mystical. This is seen most intensely when a new baby is born — the dazzle of new life, a fresh destiny, reawakens the dashed hopes of adults that things might change. Pure magic — the only thing that could really alter the paths of generations of low-wage, uneducated people — has arrived, and anything seems possible. My grandmother had pressured my mom to work her magic on the scratch tickets she’d buy and hand over to her, with a penny for scratching. Her annoyance when mother’s cards turned up duds was palpable. I can only imagine the burst of optimism my beginner’s luck must have inspired, yet I don’t remember my mother pumping me for numbers anytime afterward, not beyond the occasional, whimsical participation in a random lotto ticket bought spontaneously at a shop check-out.

Late that night, hours after the 7:45pm number-pull, I did some Googling and came up with the suite of winning digits. Mine were not among them. I felt the familiar downward shift in my body that accompanies losing. But that was okay. Unlike the experience of failing to secure a grant or being passed over for an award, I’d get another chance to win tomorrow.
 

That night, after skulking about the Roosevelt in my kimono, getting busted sneaking into the Blossom Ballroom, where the first-ever Academy Awards took place, I retire for the night and dream of dogs (28), singing (37), and a cranky old actress (14, 12) I was directing in a film staged beneath an orange (51, 9) tree (11). There was also soup, records, and an escalator in my dream, but the guide hollywoodbet.net doesn’t have numbers for such things, though it does for “dirty woman,” stud farm,” and “vixen.” The process of waking up and recording the ephemeral scenes before they dissipated, and then looking up their numbers on my phone, was addictive by day two. I understood why my grandmother got so into it that she kept her Lucky Numbers Dream Book – yellowed, coverless, heavily notated with an exploded appearance — until her death.

I could really get into the groove of this spooky, slightly OCD practice, but I’d have to start winning because I’m ultimately too cheap to throw my dollars in the trash. After checking out of the hotel we pop around the corner to Hollywood Liquors. An electronic voice keeps chirping Welcome to Hollywood Liquors! Welcome to Hollywood Liquors! and I realize I’m standing in front of the voice activator. Above me, a series of horrible politicians make excuses for not impeaching the president on the television. The man working the register wishes me a sweet Good luck as I pay for my gamble (cash only – California lotto forbids paying with credit cards as an attempt to prevent compulsive gamblers from draining their savings) and I vow to return with a bundle of cash for him if I win. But I don’t.

That night, back in my own bed, my boyfriend and I fall asleep watching Alejandro Jodorowsky’s Holy Mountain on a laptop, and unsurprisingly I dream of poop (human dung, 34). I also dream I am living in a small house (16) filled with kids (28). I dream that my friend Amber Dawn is trying to match me up with some femme girls on the computer (45). I don’t normally understand what to do with femme girls, sexually speaking, but I decide what the hey and make some dates. Then I’m riding in a car (51) with my ex and their new girlfriend — it’s hers, a vintage Chevy Nova — and they drop me off at a Kmart to get airline tickets (2). I realize with horror that I’m not wearing a mask, an experience there is no number for on bestsportsbetting.com. There seems to be no good lotto game that night, so I save my numbers and plan to play two batches of digits the following night.

The next night is Valentine’s Day and my mom, who I live with, is out getting her second Covid vaccine. My boyfriend and I take advantage of my empty house by having sex all over it. I fall asleep deeply happy that my elderly, COPD’d mother will be safe from Covid, and that my new boyfriend is such a perv. I dream that I’m flossing my teeth (21) in the bathroom of a roomy house (26) in Oakland, where I will soon be performing with my old literary event Sister Spit. There are lots of people (41), mostly young women (16), though I soon scold myself mentally for presuming their pronouns. I realize they are performing and I’m not familiar with them — I’m embarrassed of my ignorance and anxious that my hosting will suck. It’s a work (28) stress dream! I wake up relieved that it wasn’t real, but also full of melancholy, longing for the pre-pandemic days of touring and performing.

I bring my numbers, sourced from rsabet.com, to Haykashen’s the Armenian bodega across the street. I feel like I still don’t understand how to play the game, and the woman behind the counter is equally flustered and confused. “Good luck, I hope you win!” the woman enthuses so genuinely I feel like she’s my family and I’m being sent out into the world to make them proud. I think figuring out together how to make my bet has stress-bonded us. I pledge in my heart to give everyone who works at Haykashen’s a bunch of money if I win, even though they always park in front of my driveway and it’s hella annoying to ask them to move every time I need my mom to drive me to Trader Joe’s. However, I don’t win.

I’d always wanted to try out my grandmother’s gambling system, having recognized her Dream Book as a sacred text even before I really understood what it was. I enjoyed how the process forced me to consider my dreams — I found that the practice of morning recollection built upon itself, with my dreams being increasingly easy to remember. Finding a dream theme listed in the numbers guide gave my body a shock of dopamine, an early win of sorts. And the expectation, knowing that I was participating in a communal activity that probably wouldn’t but possibly could positively transform my life in unimaginable ways — well, it brought a sort of magic into my days. And, not only did it make me feel closer to my grandmother, feeling the same swells of anticipation and hope she likely experienced, but it helped me feel closer to my fellow humans, all of us betting on luck, daring to hope, hustling to get over. 

But my grandmother played this sport in another time, when it was legit illegal, the bookie coming into her workplace each day to collect bets in cash. I think that if it were still illegal, and a mafia lackey was running my numbers, it would be much more interesting, and having that daily visitation would also motivate me to participate. 

As it is, I think my gambling will return to the odd bingo game played at home for spare change with my son, plus scratching the occasional scratcher my mom sometimes brings home. Sitting at the table, my penny scraping up piles of dust, I can feel a bubble of hope rise in my mother: maybe, just maybe, the child she birthed is in possession of a remarkable, life-changing luck.