MRS. POCCIOTTI: Yes, I think maybe God knows . . . [She touches her cheek as though she had been struck there—then slowly continues sweeping.]

MISS MORGAN [distinctly stressing each syllable]: How long has she been in that room? Days? Weeks? Months?—What? Mrs. Pocciotti, it seems necessary to inform you that there is an element of time we go by. Time measured by the clock, by the calendar, by the—time! Time! Do you understand what time means?

MRS. POCCIOTTI: Time?

MISS MORGAN: Yes. Now how long has your daughter been in this condition?

MRS. POCCIOTTI [quietly after a pause]: Six mon’s.

MISS MORGAN: Six months? She’s been in there in the dark for that long? Are you sure?

MRS. POCCIOTTI: Six mon’s.

MISS MORGAN: How did this start?

MRS. POCCIOTTI: On New Year’s, he didn’t come over. It started that night. It was first that he didn’t come over in a long time so she called up his place and his Mama said he was out and not to call him no more. She said he was going to be married with some German girl in just a few days and they didn’t want to be bothered.

MISS MORGAN: He? He? Who is he?

MRS. POCCIOTTI: The boy that she went steady with. Name was Max.

MISS MORGAN: And you feel that her disappointment over this boy is what caused her to have this depressed mental state?

MRS. POCCIOTTI: What?

MISS MORGAN: After that she went in the dark room? You think that was how it was started?

MRS. POCCIOTTI: Maybe it was. I dunno. She phoned him from down at the drugstore and then she comes up to the kitchen and heated some water. She said she had pains in her stummick. Bad pains.

MISS MORGAN: Did she?

MRS. POCCIOTTI: I dunno. Maybe she did. Anyhow she went to bed with it and ain’t been up from it since. [Her broom makes timid excursions around Miss Morgan’s chair. The social service worker draws her feet in like a cat avoiding spilled water.]

MISS MORGAN: You mean that she’s been shut up in the room ever since?

MRS. POCCIOTTI: Yes.

MISS MORGAN: Since New Year’s, you said? Six months!

MRS. POCCIOTTI: Six mon’s.

MISS MORGAN: Doesn’t she ever come out?

MRS. POCCIOTTI: When she’s got to go to the bathroom, then she comes out. But other times she stays in.

MISS MORGAN: What does she do in there?

MRS. POCCIOTTI: I dunno. She just lays in there in the dark. Sometimes she makes noise.

MISS MORGAN: Noise?

MRS. POCCIOTTI: Crying and calling bad names and knocking her hands on the wall. Upstairs they complain sometimes. But mostly she don’t say nothing. Just lays in there on the bed.

MISS MORGAN: How about eating? Does she take regular meals?

MRS. POCCIOTTI: She eats what he brings her.

MISS MORGAN: He? Who do you mean, Mrs. Pocciotti?