Locked up love: Couple faces relationship separated by cell bars

It’s Valentine’s Day, and Brittney Hamm is visiting her fiance at the place they met: the Monroe County Jail.

The clouds above hang low, teasing with the possibility of rain. Brittney, 25 and only a semester away from a computer degree at Ivy Tech, hurries down College Avenue holding her daughter’s hand. Gracie, 5, points at the storefront windows bright with red-heart shaped balloons. Brittney doesn’t turn her head to look as she pulls her daughter along. They’re late for their 12:15 p.m. check-in at the Justice Building.

They enter the stale air of the jail’s first-floor waiting room, Brittney’s long red hair falling in front of her face. She presses a button on the intercom.

“I’m here to visit Jere Brant Crouch,” she says into the speaker, and the heavy door buzzes to let her and Gracie in.

Brittney pulls out two forms of ID -- a photocopy of her birth certificate and a credit card with her name on it -- and slips it underneath the glass to show the guard. She’s wearing her Calgon Hawaiian Ginger body mist. She knows Jere won’t be able to smell it, but she wears it anyway.

For most, Valentine’s Day is filled with chocolate and roses and excuses to go out for fancy dinners. For the women visiting their men at the Monroe County Jail, Valentine’s Day is another reminder of love with restrictions.

While they wait for their visits, wives and girlfriends congregate outside, talking about the things they have in common: raising children by themselves, the uncertainties of the next court date, the public defenders too busy to call them back. No matter how intense their frustration gets, the women return as often as they can. From the sidewalk across the street, they look up to the top two floors of the Justice Building -- the floors where the jail is located -- and look for the faces of their loved ones in the windows. The men bang their fists against the glass. The women wave and blow kisses. If the weather’s warm enough, they scribble messages on the pavement in chalk, proclaiming their love in multi-colored letters big enough to be read from high above.

Anything to get close to their men. Anything to let them know they’re not alone.

****

Brittney and Jere were set up on a blind date six months ago. Jere, 37, was already in custody awaiting trial on theft charges. After writing each other every day for two months, their first meeting took place at the jail, with a wall of Plexiglas separating their anxious selves. She wore a white top with minimal but noticeable makeup on her face. He wore his orange jumpsuit.

Before the beginning of the new year, Brittney and other visitors often had to wait for hours until their names were called for their 15-minute visits with their loved ones.

When the waiting room grew too crowded, the women would huddle outside, shivering in the cold and wrapping their babies in blankets inside their strollers. Others would sit in their cars in the jail parking lot, turning the heat on full blast. Brittney sometimes waited until 2 a.m. to have her visit. When it was warm, children played ball in the alley behind the jail.

In January, the jail started a new visitation protocol. Instead of talking to their loved ones face to face through the Plexiglass, visitors are buzzed into a room filled with computers equipped with video cameras. The prisoners stay upstairs in their cell block and sit before another computer and camera. Through a video conference similar to Skype, the two sides can see each other and talk, but only through the monitors. These visits are scheduled by appointment and now last for 30 minutes, instead of 15.

The jail is right across the street from the Smallwood Plaza, an upscale apartment complex where a four-bedroom unit can go for more than $2,400 a month. The IU students who rent these apartments don’t know their neighbors who occupy the jail. When the visitors would stand outside on the street, the students would stare at them, obviously confused as to why they were writing huge messages in chalk.

Brittney is still adjusting to the new visitation system. She had to trade in waiting for hours to see Jere through glass for prompt but impersonal visits.

“His eyes are my favorite thing about him, and I can’t even look at them.”

****

She walks into the visitation room for her Valentine’s visit and sits down at monitor number eight. Other women sit by her side at their own monitors. Gracie, who is from a previous marriage, is with her, holding her hand.

Jere puts his hands on his cheek, hiding the scruff the weak razors cause on his skin. He blows Gracie kisses and she blows some more back. Brittney blocks out the rest of the room as she stares into a small camera above the screen. Her eyes pierce into his brown eyes all the way up to his cell block. Brittney can’t look at the screen and into the camera at the same time so she goes back and forth, moving her eyes in all directions, trying to find the perfect place to land them. At the beginning of the visit, Gracie starts off on Brittney’s lap, then climbs underneath the table and starts playing with a young boy.

In numerous visits men wink and blow kisses at Brittney while Jere’s back is turned to it all. She wants just him, but instead gets the rest of his block as well. Today an old man sits on the table behind Jere, invading the little time Jere has with his fiancee, turning their time into a communal gathering for the entire 30-minute visit. From the table the old man looks right into the camera, straight into Brittney’s eyes.

All 5 feet and 11 inches of Jere take up half the screen as he nods his head to the side. Brittney jokes around and tells him, “Why don’t you just jump into my pocket and we can go home?”

He talks about his frustration with the jail and how much he wants to be with Brittney, especially on Valentine’s Day. “Don’t worry about me. I’m fine as long as I have you,” Jere says to Brittney.

He promises to make every Valentine’s Day from this day forward better than today.She wonders when she will see him next. You can hear the frustration in Brittney’s voice as she mentions how they spent their first Thanksgiving, Christmas and birthdays apart. She looks at their setbacks together and how even though their relationship started off on a rough patch, if they can get through this, they can get through anything. 

Brittney has never held Jere’s hand. She has never kissed his lips or woken up to him in her bed. They have never seen a movie together or talked over a home-cooked dinner. Their relationship’s home is the jail. It is the only place they can see each other. It’s the mental snapshot that she takes with her wherever she goes.

Brittney sprays her Calgon Hawaiian Ginger body mist on every letter she sends him. He can smell her without bringing his nose to her neck, and keeps all the letters beneath his pillow.

In the past 14 days, Brittney and her daughter Gracie have sent Jere 14 Valentine’s Day cards. One of them got sent back because it contained glitter.

When everyone else in her house goes to bed, Brittney sits at her kitchen table and writes Jere a two to three-page letter.

“We have never once run out of things to write or say to each other,” Brittney says.

His handwritten words are what keep Brittney going. They make it so she can’t let go. She bought Jere Ghirardelli caramel, raspberry and peanut chocolates for Valentine’s Day. She also bought him a watch for his birthday. Both these gifts sit at home because gifts are not allowed at the jail. They wait with Brittney to give Jere when he gets out of jail. Brittney doesn’t know how old the chocolate will be when she will actually be able to give it to him.

They begin to talk about how upset he is that the judge didn’t show up to the court hearing earlier that morning. The one-minute warning comes up on the monitor.

****

In the past, Brittney’s relationships moved extremely fast. She laughs as she says this relationship is definitely moving slow. “I think hopefully one day we can look back at this and laugh.”

Jere tells her that when he does get out he is going to go home, shower, use a real razor, pick Brittney and Gracie up and take it from there. “I think about holding his hand 24/7. I told him I’m going to get on his nerves because I’m just not going to leave him alone.”

She knows what she wants and it’s Jere. She feels the connection few people ever feel in a lifetime and as much as she admits a prisoner is not who she ideally thought she would end up with, she can’t deny love.

Brittney calls Jere her best friend. They tell each other things about their lives no one else knows. He asks her about the weather and what she’s making for dinner as she teases him about the Bob Barker hot dogs he will most likely eat.

They talk about the movies he is going to catch up on and how he wants to see Adam Sandler’s movie “Just Go With It,” and if he snores when he sleeps. The biggest complaint she has about Jere is that he doesn’t like tomatoes. She gets annoyed that he constantly complains about how much he needs a haircut just two weeks after he’s had one, and he tells her to chill out when she makes a huge deal about a small blemish on her face.

“You can’t help who you fall in love with,” She says. “It was love at first letter.”

****

In the last minute of their visit Brittney rushes to say everything that she possibly can. I love yous are tossed back and forth as Jere tells Gracie that he loves her and misses her. Gracie asks him when he is getting out and he says he doesn’t know. “Well, you’ve been here for like 12 years,” Gracie tells him.

The old man is still staring at Brittney when the monitor goes black.

Brittney and Gracie walk out of the jail holding hands, breathing in air Jere can’t feel inside.

When Brittney gets home from her visit, she receives a Valentine's Day letter from Jere. He says the connection he has with her he has never had with anybody else. He calls her his soul mate and says they were destined to meet each other.

“I think I am more worried you will be disappointed in me. Maybe I won’t live up to all that you have built me up to be in your mind. I will always try my best to make you happy and be there for you. As a team we can do anything.”

That evening, Brittney receives a phone call from Jere informing her that the judge just sentenced him to nine months in prison. She hopes the sentence will be shortened to a few months. He tells her how sorry he is and understands if she doesn’t want to be with him because of this. She tells him like always that they can make it through anything. She’s already devoted so much time to him and she is never going to give up.

“It’s just another road block, but we will get through it,” Brittney tells him.

She hangs up the phone and tells herself, “Happy Valentine’s Day, Brittney.”