I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings: Chapters 11–17

Because of the lurid tales we read and our vivid imaginations and, probably, memories of our brief but hectic lives, Bailey and I were afflicted—he physically and I mentally.

It was the same old quandary. I had always lived it. There was an army of adults, whose motives and movements I just couldn’t understand and who made no effort to understand mine.

Grandmother Baxter’s clients were there in gay and flippant array.

Their decision to be satisfied with life’s inequities was a lesson for me.

Momma beamed and Uncle Willie was proud when Bailey regaled the customers with our exploits.

Just after our return he had taken to sarcasm, picked it up as one might pick up a stone, and put it snufflike under his lip. The double entendres, the two-pronged sentences, slid over his tongue to dart rapier-like into anything that happened to be in the way.

For a while I was the only recipient of Bailey’s kindness. It was not that he pitied me but that he felt we were in the same boat for different reasons, and that I could understand his frustration just as he could countenance my withdrawal.

Like the women who sat in front of roaring fireplaces, drinking tea incessantly from silver trays full of scones and crumpets.

What on earth did one put on to go to Mrs. Flowers’ house? I knew I shouldn’t put on a Sunday dress. It might be sacrilegious.

Our Father, you know the tribulations of your humble servant. I have with your help raised two grown boys. Many’s the day I thought I wouldn’t be able to go on, but you gave me the strength to see my way clear.

Every person I knew had a hellish horror of being “called out of his name.” It was a dangerous practice to call a Negro anything that could be loosely construed as insulting...

Since she seldom dealt with money, other than to take it in and to tithe to the church, I supposed that the weekly ten cents was to tell us that even she realized that a change had come over us, and that our new unfamiliarity caused her to treat us with a strangeness.

But there was no air of spent revelry about him.

When he told me that the movie would be shown, we went into our best behavior and were the exemplary children that Grandmother deserved and wished to think us.

One year later he did catch a freight, but because of his youth and the inscrutable ways of fate, he didn’t find California and his Mother Dear—he got stranded in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, for two weeks.