Series: Four Lives, One Last Chance - A Year In Drug Court: Part 9 Of 41

ACT II. JENNIFER: 'I'VE NEVER BEEN WITH A MAN WHO DIDN'T CURSE AT ME'

For two years, Jennifer has been waiting.

For two years, her man has been in prison, and their relationship has been
blooming through jail mail. They've been able to see each other only once
since he's been locked up, when he was allowed to attend his father's funeral.

It started when Jennifer was in the York County Jail. The first features
she noticed were the tall black man's luminous light brown eyes.

"When I first saw his eyes -Whoo! And he had a body that wouldn't quit,"
Jennifer recalls. "He had a six-pack and everything."

Jennifer passed a "kite" - a note - to the man, telling him to write back.
His name, she learned, was Ben. He had been locked up for malicious
wounding, after he hit a man with an ashtray during an argument.

Ben caught two years for that charge, and he and Jennifer ended up writing
long letters to each other, pouring out their lives on paper. She told him
how social services had taken her children and a judge had severed her
parental rights. She told him how she's been fighting to stay clean in the
Drug Court program and win her children back. Ben, in turn, wrote about his
own recovery and how he had rediscovered religion in prison.

Now, in late summer, Ben is out.

The two fall into a fast and furious relationship that often worries the
Drug Court staff and Jennifer's peers.

Jennifer knows that dating Ben violates a well-known Narcotics Anonymous
recommendation. It says addicts should avoid relationships until they've
been clean for a year. The idea is that addicts must learn about themselves
before bringing someone new into their lives.

Ford, one of her counselors, tells Jennifer that she needs to slow down,
and Linwood, one of her friends, warns her not to put too many expectations
in the relationship.

But a beaming Jennifer seems determined to follow her own yearnings, and
soon Ben is staying several nights a week at her East End apartment.

Through years of drug addiction, Jennifer knew only men who beat her and
yelled at her. Ben, she says, is good to her. He looks after her and treats
her with respect.

"I know it's crazy, but I've never been with a man who didn't curse at me.
You know, 'Come here, bitch,' " she says. "You don't even know, I feel so
good."

The two lovers couldn't be any more different. Ben, a long-boned, lanky
man, is soft-spoken, even quiet, while Jennifer is famously boisterous and
outspoken. Her Drug Court peers call her "wide-open," while the counselors
label her "forceful" in their reports.

Regardless of their differences, she and Ben click. They go to church and
Narcotics Anonymous meetings together, and Jennifer's family quickly
embraces him. He even goes to work for her mother at a Dollar General store.

Jennifer has been clean for about eight months - ever since she entered
Drug Court at the beginning of the year. Still, she approaches her first
sober relationship much like the abusive, drug-addled ones in her past, a
pitfall that many people in her life predicted.

The arguments start with the little things. She manipulates Ben and picks
fights with him. A neat freak, Jennifer rides Ben about not flushing the
toilet or leaving tissues on the nightstand.

"This is my damn house," she tells him. "You can live the way I want to
live, or you can get out."

When he doesn't want to come home with her one night, she threatens to
sleep with someone else. Then she gets mad when he agrees to stay with her.

"No, don't come home with me because I said I'd be with someone else," she
says. "Come home with me because you want to."

"Jennifer, I love you," Ben says, "but you gonna drive me away."

Jennifer knows that she's treating him badly.

"I have to learn this all over again," she says. "It ain't funny because
he's a good man. He is actually everything I want in a man, from the top of
his head down to his toes."

The eruption finally comes after a long night of arguing and accusations of
cheating on both sides. Jennifer punches Ben in the mouth at a 7-Eleven,
risking an arrest that could violate her probation.

Back at her apartment, Ben strikes back. Jennifer is left with bruises and
a broken necklace as Ben storms out of the apartment. He walks home to
Yorktown that night, a five-hour journey on foot.

Jennifer tells her friends and counselors about the fight, and their
concern grows. They warn her to leave Ben alone and concentrate on herself,
but Jennifer can't turn her back on him. At an NA meeting just a few weeks
earlier, he had written, "I want to marry you soon," on a pamphlet.

Ben apologizes profusely after the fight. Jennifer, disregarding the advice
of nearly everyone in her life, wants to take him back.

"If he feels it's meant for us to be together and go to church and do what
he's got to do and make this 50-50, then I don't mind putting in my 50,"
she says. "But I ain't gonna put in 90 and him put in 10."

As they start patching the relationship back together, Jennifer worries
about how Judge Conway will react when he hears about the fight.

During her next court appearance, Al Holmes, a parole officer substituting
for Charity, tells the judge about the scuffle and notes that Ben is a
"known convicted felon." He says the judge should order Jennifer to stay
away from Ben.

Jennifer sighs and shakes her head as Ford gives his report to the judge.

"We're concerned that she puts her recovery at risk if she continues on the
path she has chosen," he says.

Then Jennifer rises and stands before Judge Conway.

"Jennifer," he asks, "were you beaten this weekend?"

She rolls her head and chuckles.

"Yeah," she says.

"What's funny about being beaten?" the judge asks. "Do you feel you
deserved it?"

"No," Jennifer replies, her normally resounding voice barely audible.

The judge orders her to stay away from Ben.

"We're building you up during the day, and you're having it torn down at
night," he explains.

"The personal reason is that I don't want you hurt."

Jennifer walks back to her seat with a stunned expression, her mouth
hanging slightly open. She puts her head in her hands for a minute. Then
she looks up, fighting back her tears, and walks out of the courtroom.