She's Come Undone

When Dolores is 10, her family moves to Treetop Acres. There, Bernice’s mental health continually declines. She becomes constantly worried about one of the neighborhood children dying as a result of some accident she caused. She rarely leaves the house, has multiple newly developed compulsions and obsessions, and becomes dependent upon a pet parrot named Petey that Tony got her. Bernice is always focused on Petey, but never her family; as a result, Dolores decides to punish Bernice by refusing to kiss her anymore, using the reasoning that she is put off by the parrot being near her mother’s mouth all the time. Dolores also meets a new best friend named Jeanette, who has more privileges than she does and who fills her in on things like French kissing, sex, and the experience of menstruating. Dolores finds the whole experience awkward but is grateful to have someone providing her with direct information for once.

When Dolores’s father decides he wants to use a recent bonus to put a swimming pool in the back yard, Bernice accuses him of cheating on her with Mrs. Masicotte, calling him “an old lady’s whore” (26). Tony responds by slapping and yelling at her, then taking Petey outside and releasing him. Dolores watches, hating both her parents, and escapes for several hours on her bike. When Dolores comes home that night, she finds her parents sharing a cigarette together. Her father warns her never to tell anyone what happens inside the family home. Afterward, Dolores gets her period, and her mother’s reaction is to break down in tears, voicing her frustration.

While the pool is being installed, Bernice escapes to visit Grandma and avoid the bustle of strange men in her home. Dolores stays home and spends the week with her father, and they go shopping and swim countless laps together. At one point, her father touches her inappropriately over her bathing suit, but Dolores doesn’t yet recognize it as anything nefarious. She starts to empathize with her father more and excuses his actions toward her mother.

At the end of the week, Dolores’s father drives her out to visit her mother and Grandma, and Dolores finds out that her father has filed for divorce and will be gone by the time she and her mother return home, as he is moving to New Jersey. He was fired after Mrs. Masicotte discovered him having an affair with a tenant. A week later, Bernice approaches Dolores while swimming and asks if she finds her pretty. Dolores looks at her mother, seeing her as timid and overweight, and answers, “Yeah, pretty ugly” (33). She tries to call it a joke, but Bernice is already in tears. Deep down, Dolores wonders if something she did caused her father to leave.

When Bernice’s mental health declines so severely that Dolores (now 12) seeks Tony’s help, Tony takes her to live with her grandmother in Rhode Island for a time. Her grandmother lives on Pierce Street, in a house she lived in with her husband, and in a neighborhood that her traditional Catholic sensibilities tell her is in decline. She warns Dolores not to speak to most of the neighbors and calls one of the families, the Pysyks, “dirty DPs” (41) (DPs stands for “Displaced Persons,” a term that refers to Jewish people who came to the United States to escape World War II). Dolores muses on the idea of displaced persons and realizes her own initials and current position in life fit the description. Unfortunately, the daughters in the family seem to hate her instantly and do nothing but bully her whenever she walks by. One day at the store, Dolores runs into them and ends up in a scuffle when she repeats her grandma’s prejudiced phrase. She tells her grandma that she was attacked and didn’t fight back, winning her grandma’s sympathy. Meanwhile, Dolores receives letters from her mother, who is in a hospital and occasionally sends art that she has made. She stares at a photograph on her grandmother’s wall of her deceased son, Eddie.

Dolores starts attending school at St. Anthony’s, a strict school that her mother attended as a child that is known for its corporal punishment policies, and is optimistic about making new friends. She quickly finds herself alone, however, and the Pysyk girls seem to always be around every corner. Dolores’s teacher, Miss Lilly, seems as timid as she is. Dolores grows to despise the other students at the school, who bully her and fake good behavior in ways she has no desire to mimic. When Dolores finds a picture of her mother on the wall amongst the other alumni, she is surprised to see herself in the photo.

At home, Dolores tries to read her textbooks but becomes distracted both by emerging thoughts of suicide and by a vulgar drawing in one of her religious textbooks. A boy and girl, who appear to be living out the perfect image of good children, have been redrawn to show them having sex. Dolores stares at the page and cannot get it out of her mind. To take revenge on Rosalie Pysyk, Dolores exchanges their textbooks and tells the priest during confession that she saw Rosalie create the drawing. When the textbooks are inspected and Rosalie is severely punished, Dolores walks home feeling lighter than ever and hungry for more of the power she just tasted. Above her bed, she hangs a painting of a woman’s leg with parrot wings attached to it that Bernice gifted her.

In 1964, Bernice is released from the hospital almost a different person. She spent months reflecting and working off her excess weight by walking about the hospital grounds and seems eager to find work and get back to having some sort of life. She comes to stay in Rhode Island with Dolores and Grandma, where tension rises between Bernice and her mother. They fight over Marilyn Monroe’s suicide, Grandma insulting her choices and Bernice expressing her empathy for how Marilyn Monroe felt trapped and weighed down by expectations. They watch The Beatles’ Ed Sullivan performance, and Grandma complains about the noisy crowd and forward-thinking hairstyles.

Bernice continues going for walks every night and applies for several jobs but none call her back. One night, Bernice comes into Dolores’s room and says how repressive she feels Grandma’s house is, and how her childhood was the source of many of her adult problems. She remarks on how Dolores seems the same as she always was, and to prove her mother wrong, Dolores takes the cigarette out of her mother’s hand and inhales, clearly having done so before.

When Bernice gets a job interview that summer, she skips it, opting to instead trade in Tony’s old car for a new white convertible and get her hair dyed blonde. She gets a job at a toll booth and a date soon after, and Grandma immediately criticizes her decision to date. When Grandma finds out the man is Italian, she makes racist remarks in conversation with Dolores. Dolores often sneaks across the street to hang out with Roberta, a woman around the same age as Dolores’s grandma who owns a tattoo parlor. They smoke together and discuss life, and Dolores enjoys Roberta’s matter-of-fact viewpoint and hearing about her grandma and Uncle Eddie. Dolores declines Jeanette’s invitation to come visit, preferring to snack and sit in front of the TV or out on the porch. When her mother sees Tony at work and finds out he’s back in town, she urges him to call Dolores. Tony tries to apologize and invite Dolores over, but Dolores wants nothing to do with him. In a rare moment, she seeks comfort from her grandma.

A couple named Jack and Rita Speight move into the apartment that Grandma rents out. Rita works as a pediatric nurse and Jack is a radio host. Dolores, her mother, and her grandma all become enamored with the new neighbors, particularly for their good looks. They live right above Grandma’s apartment and Dolores listens to and watches them every day. When Jack and Rita invite the family over for dinner, the couple dotes on them, and Jack tells Dolores that her name means “Our Lady of Sorrow” (75). Her mother adds that Dolores was named after Dolores Del Rio, a celebrated Latina actress throughout the 20th century. Jack even manages to break through Grandma’s tough skin, placing a sombrero on her head and lightening her mood.

That night, Dolores listens as Rita and Jack make love above her and mimics the words she hears Rita say. The next day, Dolores asks her mother if she thinks Jack is handsome, and about her Uncle Eddie. Bernice explains that Eddie was a risk taker and agrees with Dolores that he and Jack have a similar look. Soon, it becomes clear that Jack and Bernice are sexually involved. Later on, Dolores explores herself sexually as she thinks about Jack and her Uncle Eddie touching her.

Dolores starts eighth grade as her mother and grandmother see her off to school. She notices that Jack takes the same route as her and fantasizes about riding with him to school. When both Rita and Dolores’s family are out, Jack comes over to borrow a screwdriver to fix his fan, and when he can’t find one, Dolores chases him back to his porch. They talk for a while and Dolores mentions how both her Uncle Eddie and her father’s parents drowned. Jack confesses his job isn’t going well and Rita is pregnant, and before long, Jack starts tickling Dolores and climbing on top of her. She tells him to stop several times, and when he finally does, she starts to cry. Jack tries to explain it away and then insults Dolores for reacting the way she did.

That night, Dolores thinks about her uncle’s drowning and how he must have felt a similar sense of no control. She feels guilty for interpreting Jack’s actions as sexual after he claimed they weren’t. When Jack appears at the breakfast table the next morning and offers to give Dolores a ride to school, she awkwardly agrees. In the car, he asks her if she told anyone about anything that happened, compliments her looks, and holds her hand, calling her Dolores Del Rio. At lunch, Dolores meets a girl named Norma whom she finds smoking in the school yard. Norma tells her she “need[s] straightening out” (97). Jack rolls by to pick Dolores up after school, and when she gets in the car, she takes a puff of his cigarette and refers to herself as Dolores Del Rio.

Dolores sees Jack more and more. He picks her up from school, and they ride around as Dolores listens to Jack complain about his dissatisfaction with his job and family. After being assigned a science project on childbirth in school, Dolores asks Jack when he plans to announce his and Rita’s baby, but Jack seems uneager to discuss it. When Jack starts stroking her leg, Dolores feels uncomfortable, and Jack starts talking about how she and him are a team against the world. When Norma invites Dolores to go downtown and hang out with her boyfriend, Dolores feels disgusted by him and tells Norma so. Norma punches Dolores in the stomach, and Dolores leaves the school with Jack. That night, Dolores’s father calls, and she tells him she has no interest in talking to him anymore.

When Jack picks Dolores up the next day, he is drinking and driving, angry, and abrasive. He tells Dolores to “shut up” when she mentions her mother’s bird in passing, and insists on taking Dolores on an adventure to a place he won’t name. When they pull up to a place full of dogs barking in their pens, enraged and sick-looking, Dolores wonders why they are there. Jack takes out a pornographic magazine and repeatedly urges Dolores to look through it, but she refuses. She denies a request from Jack to kiss her, but he does so anyway, and before long takes her to the ground as she attempts to fight him off to no avail. Jack rapes Dolores as she wonders if she is going to die and realizes there is nobody around to help her.

Afterward, she has no way home but to ride with Jack, and along the way, he manipulates her into thinking she was half-responsible for what happened. He tells her that they are both “awful people” (110), and warns her that if she ever tells anyone else, he will kill himself and his wife, and by default, their baby. Dolores goes home that night feeling as though she is filthy and forever changed, and when Rita miscarries a few weeks later, Dolores feels as though she and Jack made it happen.