Annette Booth pushed her thin frame against the spiked gate around the Maryland Penitentiary, screaming greetings at the light that through yonder window breaks.
But this isn't Romeo and Juliet, and the inmate who replied definitely was not the fair sun. When he yelled back, it was to say: "They treating us real (expletive) in here."
On the street this is called "hollering," a way to say hello to your honey, your brother or your bunky in prison. It's a way to visit after visiting hours, to avoid waiting in line and being caught on an outstanding warrant, to flirt with a whole flotilla of captive men.
It's an all-but-impossible enterprise at the more modern prisons clustered in Jessup, Hagerstown and on the Eastern Shore, where the state controls land well beyond the walls. But the north face of the penitentiary, one of the oldest operating maximum-security prisons in the nation, looks right onto East Eager Street.
"This is a creative system of visitation and communication," said Commissioner LaMont W. Flanagan, overseer of the Baltimore City Detention Center. He sometimes can hear the hollers from his Madison Street office.
"I don't think it's a security problem, but it can be perceived as a nuisance because of the high octaves of the voices," he said.
When the hollering begins, the stone facade of the West Wing seems to speak through a caldron of personalities, anger and machismo.
Echoing walls make the voices almost impossible to understand. Faces inside, obscured by metal grilles, are invisible. But those who holler from the street claim to see them.
On a recent night, Ms. Booth, 29, threaded the strap of her handbag delicately through the bars of the gate, using both hands and all her lung capacity to yell toward the windows.
She reacted like a schoolgirl being admired by a round of boys. She doubled up, giggling with all the attention, as one inmate and then a number chanted, "Ann-ette! Ann-ette!"
"A drug addict don't need spare time on her hands," Ms. Booth said, adding that she had been clean for seven months. "That's why I come down here and holler at them. It kills my urge from going to get drugs."
She somehow reached into the din to pick out voices. "That's Jerry right there," she said, cocking her ear at an inmate's distant howl.
"They know where I've been. They give me positive thoughts," she said. "They thought I was high one day, and they cussed me out some kind of bad. When they found out I wasn't, they all apologized."
A few nights later, a man who identified himself as Mike walked along the Eager Street fence, hunching his shoulders against the mist and emitting staccato bellows to bring someone to the window. Then he shouted his brother's name.
"Hey Gary," an inmate called to the back of the tier, "there's someone hollering for you."
They arranged for an intermediary to speak for Gary, who was far from the Eager Street windows. They spoke of someone named Rosemary and the family and what life is like on either side of the fence.
The conversation ended with Mike saying, "Tell him I love him," and "Tell him I love him, too," wafting faintly back.
"When you love someone, you'll do all kinds of things to communicate," Mike said later. "If I can't get in to see him, at least I can hear his voice. Let him know that everybody at home is fine, that everybody's still living."
Most hollerers visit inmates face to face as well. But visiting hours at the penitentiary end by 8 p.m., and officials only allow inmates two visits a week.
Several people interviewed after hollering from the street said it's more convenient than a visit.
On a recent Saturday night, Derrick Thomas, 38, whistled outside the Baltimore Pre-Release Unit on Greenmount Avenue.
He was hoping his brother, who's allowed to have $65 on hand as a work-release inmate, would throw down some cash. But nobody came to the window.
Inmates can get in trouble for yelling out the windows, a rule violation that could cost them privileges. But Penitentiary Warden Eugene M. Nuth said he rarely applies those sanctions because it's hard to figure out who is yelling when.
"They've been yelling out those windows for time immemorial," he said.
But one night so many inmates were shouting at Ms. Booth and a companion that a correctional officer closed the penitentiary windows with a long, slow creak. From inside, the shouts continued, muffled and confused.
Ms. Booth was still trying to get through.
"Hey Andre? Can you still hear me? They closed the windows on you."