The Leavenworth County Jail: A Short Story

Seven million, three-hundred thousand children, nationally are affected by parents being incarcerated for days, weeks, months, and even years. For ten days I was affected by my father’s incarceration at the Leavenworth County Jail. To some this is nothing, but to my family, this was a huge ordeal. Not only was he absent from our lives for ten days, which was longer than he’d ever been gone, but we had to transport him there, plus watch as he walked away from his wife, his kids, and his freedom.
After we stopped and ate dinner with my father, we dropped him off at the Leavenworth County Jail. To me, it was just like any other time dropping him off at work or any other place. There was not a single type of attachment or emotional connection between me and my father. He was just the man married to my mother, paid for everything the family needed, and the

Every night my father called and every night my mom and three little sisters anxiously awaited by the phone in the kitchen along with my grandpa patiently waiting in his chair to talk to my dad. While everyone else waited by the phone I was always somewhere else in the house, hoping the phone never rang, so I wouldn’t have to come up with another excuse not to talk to him. I felt hatred towards my father not only for what he had done in the past, but for allowing himself to be put in jail and away from the entire family for ten days without any type of visitations only short, long distance phone calls. Every night for nine nights in a row, I listened from my room in the basement to the sounds of my sisters’ impatient voices to talk to our dad. Every night I also heard those rambling voices turn to sounds of sadness and endless hours of sobbing until the little girls cried themselves to asleep. Later at times throughout the night, I would hear my mother’s soft weeping through the thin, adjacent bedroom