I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings

After Maya and her father return home, Dolores gets into an argument with Bailey Senior because she thinks he lets his children come between them. Infuriated, Bailey Senior leaves home, and Maya decides that she needs to console Dolores. She feels bad for the woman, who has been “busying herself with housewifely duties” (244) while her father was drinking and dancing in Mexico. Maya tells Dolores that she has no intention to come between her and her father, but this enrages the woman even more. She calls Maya’s mother a whore and the girl slaps her. Maya and Dolores begin to struggle, and as Maya runs outside, she discovers that she has a cut in her side. Dolores, holding a hammer, runs after Maya, and the girl locks herself in the car, waiting for her father to come home.

Hearing the commotion, Bailey Senior soon returns and finds Maya bleeding. Because he doesn’t want to undermine his reputation in the community, he doesn’t take Maya to a hospital and instead drives her to his friends’ house. There, the wife cleans and bandages the wound, and Maya sees that the blood has already begun to clot.