Fonsia Dorsey

Fonsia Dorsey is a prim and proper elderly woman who has just moved into a rundown nursing home. She appears to be a fragile victim, a diabetic woman who has been abandoned by everyone she knows. No one comes to visit her. She says that her son lives too far away, in Denver, but eventually the audience learns that her friends, if she really has any, live in an upscale nursing home that Fonsia cannot afford because she is on welfare and that her son actually lives in the same town but hates his mother too much to visit her. Fonsia is only a victim when it suits her purpose. She wears a mask of charm and reticence to hide her anger and intolerance. Underneath, she is very much in control—perhaps too much in control—of her emotions and has an intense need to be right...