Protagonist Rose McGworski, a young pregnant woman working as an assistant at a hair salon, picks up a bingo habit to get out of the apartment where her injured out-of-work husband Gus sits around all day drinking beer. She befriends Fat Mary, who tells her all the bingo spots and becomes her confidant. When Rose’s baby is born she makes Ernest Hemingway his namesake, to whom she believes her husband bears resemblance. She parades him around town and brings him to every Bingo game, and his first word – and consequent nickname – is Bingo.

Gus leaves Rose abruptly under the premise of finding better doctors for his back in California. Disconcerted, Rose takes comfort in her pride for her soon-to-be first grade Bingo. When the school psychiatrist calls her in for a visit, she assumes it must be good news. He haltingly attempts to explain Ernest’s issues, many of which Rose doesn’t understand and some which she explains away – he failed a color test because colors go in different orders on the bingo jukebox, she proffers. And his knowledge of numbers, his fractioning, comes of seeing bingo prizes divided between different numbers of winners. Since Rose doesn’t understand the term idiot savant, the psychiatrist explains gently that Ernest will be going to a school for slow learners. That night Rose invites Fat Mary over for a celebration. Just imagine, she says glowingly, Bingo  up on stage teaching all the other students how to fraction!