Proof of Innocence
A short story
The wallet formed an unnatural bulge in José’s left pocket. “That looks like it’s about to explode,” his wife said as he was leaving for groceries. “I don’t know why you must keep all those receipts in there. It looks ridiculous.”
José was thirteen when he first heard a store alarm go off. He had gone through the doors at the same time as a tall woman with a big purse. She ignored the sound and kept walking ahead. José froze when he saw the guards coming after him. He had paid for the pack of bubble gum in his pocket but couldn’t prove it. It wasn’t even from that store.
He later overheard the officer saying he looked suspicious. Suspicious. It was the first time someone described him that way. Not the kind of thing a mother would say about her son. “Look at my little boy. So suspicious, isn’t he?”
The police released him after twelve hours, without an apology. On the drive back home, he and his mother were silent.
His wife was right: it did look ridiculous. But it had become a natural part of any transaction for him. Choose an item, pay for it, collect the receipt, keep it as proof of innocence, take the item home.
Whenever he went out after throwing away the old receipts, he would keep looking over his shoulder, waiting for the guards. He would only calm down once his pocket started feeling heavy again.
“Do you want a receipt, sir?”
“Yes.”
There was still some space left in his wallet. He could clean it up at the end of the week.
