The
wallet is expensive. That is, as expensive as a lost wallet in the middle of
K-town could ever be. The faux leather is peeling on the corners, and someone
has carved their initials—S.R.—into the front pocket. There are two twenty-dollar
bills inside, and an almost-full punch card for a pizza hut deal tucked beneath
the flap.
Sonja holds it in her hands, and
stares down. Her mouth presses into a thin line, and her eyes dart up and down
the length of the empty street.
It is forty dollars, she thinks.
Just enough that she’ll be able to make the rent this month. Just enough that
she’ll be able to survive.
There’s no ID either, besides those
sharp initials on the front pocket. No one will miss it. Probably.
And she needs the money.
So she slides the wallet into the
inner pocket of her coat, a great black mass procured from the Goodwill on
Fifth, and hurries on her way.
When she gets home, she places the
wallet beneath the statuette of Mother Mary on the hall table and sends up a
prayer for whoever lost the wallet, that they will be blessed as she was.
She microwaves her dinner and eats
in front of the TV, focusing resolutely on the struggles being faced by the
Real Housewives of Who Cares. Her eyes do not flicker back to the statue of
Mother Mary. She does not reach for the phone a dozen times to call the police
and hand it over to them for safekeeping. She does not toss and turn and wake
up in the morning feeling sick.
She does pay her rent on time. Mrs.
Christiansen smiles and thanks her. Neither mention the warning that Sonja’d
received last week—“Pay up or get out.”
At the restaurant, Sonja’s jumpier
than usual. She snaps at customers and wrings her apron. After her shift, she
goes to church. The row of candles burn bright and warm beneath the image of
the Christ. Sonja lights two—one for S.R., and one for her own thieving, immortal
soul.
She sits in the first row of pews
and thumbs her rosary.
“Dios mío, estoy arrepiento de todo
corazón haberte ofendido, y detesto todos mis pecados a causa de tu castigos
justos...”
Perhaps if she prays hard enough,
this weight will leave her chest. After all, the only true judge is God, and
God is loving.
But when she unlocks the door to her
little apartment and flicks the dim lights on, she’s greeted by the dark eyes
of Mother Mary.
“I had to,” she says, and snatches
the wallet from the lady’s feet. “Surely your son can forgive my desperation, Madre.”
She throws the wallet out anyway.
It’s an old thing, falling apart, and what does it mean to her anyway? Nothing.
Nothing.
She fishes it out later that night,
and eats with it sitting at her elbow.
When Sonja gets her next paycheck,
the first thing she does is withdraw forty dollars and tuck them into the first
pocket, just behind the Pizza Hut card. She keeps it in the back pocket of her
uniform pants during her next shift and walks slowly, until she comes to the
street where she found the burden in the first place. Sonja stands on the
corner of the empty, dark street with the wallet in her hand, and stares down.
She meant to leave it here, so that
the owner might pass by and find it.
But it is two twenty dollar bills.
And she’s short on the rent.
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