Excerpts from the story about Idalmin when she was a jury member:

Idalmin was nine when her mother and father were arrested by the police.

What’s all of this mess? What is going on here?’

I said. ‘Oh, nothing’, says my mom.
I noticed then that their wrists were locked with cuffs. There were people all over the apartment. They wore regular clothes but I knew they were cops, because they had their guns and these black, bullet proof vests. I really got scared and started crying.
   ‘What are you doing?’ I asked.
‘You’re too young to understand’, a cop said.
‘No I’m not. I’m in the 4th grade’, I said. ‘I have the right to know what’s going on here.’
But the cops just kept on emptying drawers and cupboards. They were looking for drugs. They destroyed the Mickey Mouse wallpaper in my room when they did big holes in the wall. They took everything – jewelry, letters, and toys and carried it off to the police station.
‘Where are you taking my mom?’ I asked. ‘I love my mom, let her go’
   ‘We have to take them with us, said the police. We promise we will bring them back’. So I believed my mom and dad would come home.

’I didn’t sleep that night. Me and my three little sisters moved in with our grandmother. Every day I asked her ‘when are my parents coming home’? My grandma just kept saying:
   ‘Tomorrow, tomorrow…’ But they never came. It was like my parents died.
   “The first time I visited mom in prison, visiting time finished after one hour. Just imagine – you haven’t seen your mom for ages, and then you only get one hour! I cried every morning for that first year.'
   During the first few years, Idalmin and her sisters went to stay with different relatives and friends. It was a difficult time. Idalmin became ill and began to skip school. Things improved when she and her sisters ended up in the same foster family. Once a week, Idalmin met with other children whose parents are in prison. They had fun and talked at events about children whose parents are in prison.

’I celebrated my tenth birthday doing nothing. No cake, no presents or hugs. When I had my mom she’d wake me up in the morning with a lot of hugs. She gave me a nice breakfast and kept saying ‘Happy Birthday’ while I was taking a shower and getting dressed.
I never thought I’d see my own parents in prison. I was used to always being with them. Sometimes we’d play bingo in the evenings. Every time my father won he would do this little cha-cha-cha-dance around the table, singing ‘Bingo, bingo.’ I thought I had the perfect thing. When I went into foster care I couldn’t believe that either. I said to myself ‘Am I dreaming?’ I used to see shows about foster kids on TV and now I am one of them!
At my fifth-grade graduation everybody else had their parents. I was all alone. No one could understand why I was crying. Only two teachers knew what had happened to me. I won a trophy for attendance because I’d been in school every day. Everybody was supposed to be happy but I wasn’t happy at all.

Text©: Carmilla Floyd
Photo©: Tora Mårtens