- Ann Gentry: What about the family income?
- Mrs. Wadsworth: Just what the county gives us for Baby.
- Ann Gentry: Your daughters, are they employed?
- Mrs. Wadsworth: Are my daughters... no, they help out the best they can, but it doesn't come to too much. Alba gives tennis lessons in the afternoon and Jermaine...
- Germaine Wadsworth: Once in a while I do a TV commercial.
- Mrs. Wadsworth: Sometimes I don't know how we make ends meet, but we always seem to manage.
- Ann Gentry: Isn't there any money from your husband's pension? Or his social security?
- Mrs. Wadsworth: Why no, how could there be?
- Germaine Wadsworth: [laughs] She thinks he's dead.
- Mrs. Wadsworth: [laughs] That man didn't die.
- Germaine Wadsworth: No such luck.
- Mrs. Wadsworth: It happened just before Baby was born. When I needed him most, he ran off and left us. But then all that's in the record.
- Ann Gentry: Oh I'm sure it is.
- Mrs. Wadsworth: My husband was a very weak man, Mrs. Gentry.
- Germaine Wadsworth: No character.
- Mrs. Wadsworth: None at all.
- Ann Gentry: And you've had no contact with him since he left?
- Mrs. Wadsworth: As far as I'm concerned, he might as WELL be dead.
- Ann Gentry: You do this every day, Mrs. Wadsworth?
- Mrs. Wadsworth: Have to, or the muscles'll go bad.
- Ann Gentry: His legs seem perfectly normal, I'm surprised he doesn't walk.
- Mr. Foley: Ann, I'm not asking you to drop it, just pull back, compromise.
- Ann Gentry: Mr. Foley, this case is full of compromise, and indifference, and criminal negligence, and we're responsible.
- Mr. Foley: Ann, you exaggerate. Other workers have put time in on this case and they've come up with no significant results.
- Ann Gentry: None of those other workers spent enough time on the case to accomplish anything.
- Mr. Foley: That's not true, one did, and...
- Ann Gentry: Yes, one did, and just when she was beginning to make progress, she disappeared.
- Mr. Foley: People drop out of sight, it happens.
- Ann Gentry: Not very often.
- Mr. Foley: Well the police looked into it, they were satisfied.
- Ann Gentry: But I'm not.
- Ann Gentry: When was the last time Baby was examined by a psychologist? Psychological tests to determine his mental range and physical reactions?
- Germaine Wadsworth: He had all those tests when he was a baby.
- Ann Gentry: But he must've had more tests since then.
- Germaine Wadsworth: No, there didn't seem to be any reason for it. Why?
- Ann Gentry: Nothing in particular, just a thought.
- Ann Gentry: Mrs. Wadsworth, if I could convince you that Baby is capable of growth and development, you wouldn't stand in his way, would you?
- Mrs. Wadsworth: Of course not, what mother would?
- Ann Gentry: Well then I think you should consider putting Baby into a special clinic for the retarded.
- Mrs. Wadsworth: Clinic? You mean like a hospital?
- Ann Gentry: Oh no, not like a hospital. It's a day clinic, more like a school, where Baby could be with other people like himself, it's really the best way, maybe the only way.
- Germaine Wadsworth: That tricky bitch!
- Alba Wadsworth: She punctured it!
- Mrs. Wadsworth: She thinks of everything.
- Babysitter: Nothing really happened, honest!
- Mrs. Wadsworth: Nothing happened? With your damn tit in his mouth, and you call that nothing? Lying bitch!
- Doctor: What's your special interest in this case?
- Ann Gentry: Can you think of anything more horrible than being buried alive? Well that's what's happened to this client. He's been imprisoned by a kind of sick love. He's a normal full grown man, trapped with no way out.
- Doctor: There's something here I don't understand. If he isn't seriously retarded, then how do you account for the fact that he can't walk, talk?
- Ann Gentry: Negative reinforcement, some kind of consistent punishment to discourage him from normal learning.
- Doctor: That's a pretty serious charge.
- Ann Gentry: Well they're a pretty strange family, especially the mother. Each child is by a different man, and all of them abandoned her. Now the last one she was married to, Baby's father, and I think when he left, she just never got over it. So she's taking revenge on the only male member of the family.
- Mrs. Wadsworth: Are you going to be Baby's new worker?
- Ann Gentry: I don't mind telling you, Mrs. Wadsworth, I made a special effort to get this assignment.
- Mrs. Wadsworth: Oh you did? And why is that?
- Ann Gentry: Well I, I heard about the case from one of the other workers, and it was impossible not to be interested.
- Mrs. Wadsworth: I see.
- Ann Gentry: I notice you call him Baby. And the case history doesn't show any other name; what is his real name?
- Germaine Wadsworth: Just Baby.
- Ann Gentry: I only thought...
- Mrs. Wadsworth: Maybe you think too much. When it comes to Baby, I do all the thinking.
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