How It All Goes Down
- Ma pretty much sits around all day, eating caramels and neglecting the housework; Petey the parrot dies, and the pool turns into brown soup.
- Dolores calls her dad and tells him that Ma is acting funny.
- He takes Ma away and delivers Dolores to Grandma's house, where she stays in her mother's old bedroom.
- She and Grandma argue a lot over Perry Como and the Lennon Sisters (basically the Jay-Z, Beyonce, and Solange of the monochromatic TV era).
- Dolores hangs out in Grandma's neighborhood, making friends with Roberta, the woman who runs the tattoo emporium across the street, and making enemies with Rosalie and Stacia Pysyk who like to call her "F***y Face" (1.3.48) and "Pukehead" (1.3.50).
- Ma sends Dolores a present from the hospital: a painting of a woman's leg floating in the sky. Weird, but at least the leg has good taste in footwear and is sporting a nice red high-heel.
- At the end of the summer, Dolores gets enrolled at St. Anthony's, where she's horrified to discover that Stacia and Rosalie also attend. (Plus, the plaid uniform is totally unflattering.)
- Dolores gets bullied a lot by many of the kids. They push her around and spill her grape drink.
- Dolores ponders killing herself by sticking her hand in the blades of a fan (probably wouldn't do the job) but then she finds an obscene drawing in her history book.
- She switches her book with Rosalie's and gets the girl in trouble.
- To comfort herself, Dolores takes her mother's flying leg painting and hangs it on the wall of her bedroom.