How It All Goes Down
- "A new version" (1.4.1) of Ma returns from the hospital.
- She sits and chain smokes and looks for jobs while Grandma and Dolores continue arguing about TV, like why Dolores thinks Paul McCartney is cute.
- Ma and Grandma fight, too, over what a woman's proper place in society should be; Ma tells Dolores that she should never let herself "become some man's personal toilet" (1.4.73).
- At school, Dolores ends up in possession of the class "opinion book" (1.4.84) and sees that everyone has either written "Don't Know Her" or "Ugly" under her name. She makes some corrections: "Quiet but Cute […] Worth getting to know" (1.4.85).
- Ma can't get a job, but she can get her hair bleached and a brand new car. Where the money comes from, we have no idea.
- Then she gets a job as a tollbooth collector (collecting tollbooths) and she starts dating a man named Iggy.
- During summer break, Dolores finds out that her dad has moved back to town. He calls her, but she tries to avoid talking to him, and she gets angry with him on the phone when they do speak.
- Grandma has been renting her third floor apartment to a woman named Mrs. Tingley, but she dies, and a new couple moves in: Jack and Rita Speight. Dolores tells us that all of them—she, her mom, and her grandma—"fell promptly and hopelessly in love" (1.4.200).