How It All Goes Down
- Dolores considers sneaking away for nine months, having the baby, and giving it up for adoption, but she doesn't want to risk losing Dante or giving the baby to bad parents.
- She decides on an abortion, but she names the baby anyway: Vita Marie.
- She makes the appointment for the day after Christmas, and cancels X-Mas at Grandma's.
- Dante offers to stay with her for the procedure, but she insists he go skiing instead.
- For Christmas, he gives her some earrings, a porcelain whale, and a new love poem; she gives him a parka and hundreds of angry stares when he's not looking.
- He leaves to go skiing, and Dolores asks Mrs. Wing, the landlady, to go with her to the clinic.
- Dante returns on time, and he pretends to be sad about the abortion, but he really isn't. He suggests they get married.
- She agrees, but their relationship hits the skids pretty fast: Dolores starts smoking again, Dante's "Love/Us" poem is rejected from a literary magazine, and they rarely sleep together.
- Dante's parents and Grandma come down for the wedding.
- Grandma bestows upon Dolores a locket and a huge wad of cash as wedding gifts. The locket was a gift from Dolores's Grandfather.
- Even though Grandma had to sit on the bus next to a bunch of scary black folks (her racism, not ours), she's doing okay.
- Dante likes her, saying, "she's got a certain feisty charm for a racist" (3.22.130).
- Grandma and Dolores talk about Ma for a bit, then Grandma tells Dolores that she accidentally touched the black man's hair on the bus: "Of course it's stiff. But it's soft, too. That's the part that surprised me. The softness" (3.22.148). And voila, racism cured.