I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings

The noise, the traffic, and the bustle of St. Louis are too much for Maya, and she treats the town as a "foreign country" (70). She convinces herself that she "didn't come to stay" (70), just like in Stamps. Although she doesn't feel at home in St. Louis, Maya develops a tolerable routine of school work, chores, and listening to radio programs. She also loses herself in mysterious worlds of fantasy and adventure stories.

Vivian works at a gambling parlor where she runs poker games, and she is rarely at home. Mr. Freeman, when not at work at the Southern Pacific yards, spends his time waiting for Vivian to come home, and when she finally arrives, he comes alive, "like a man coming out of sleep" (71). He has very little interaction with Maya and Bailey and focuses his attention only on Vivian.

Maya, who is now eight years old, has nightmares and develops a habit of sleeping in her mother's bed. One morning, after her mother has gone to work, Maya wakes up and finds Mr. Freeman sexually abusing her. When he finishes, he holds her close to him, and for a moment, Maya feels "at home" (73) and doesn't want him to let go of her. At this moment, Maya wonders if perhaps Mr. Freeman is her real father, but this tenderness quickly passes when he threatens to kill Bailey if she tells anyone about the incident.

Maya is frightened and confused, but she is too scared to reveal her feelings to Bailey or her mother. Despite this, Maya craves the physical contact, because she never had the experience of being hugged by a parent. One day, when her mother is at work, Maya, wanting a hug, decides to come up to Mr. Freeman and to sit on his lap. The man once again sexually abuses her, but this time instead of holding her in his arms, he lets her slip on the floor when he finishes.

For a couple of months after the second incident, Mr. Freeman ignores Maya, and the girl tries to forget their encounters. She feels bad for keeping a secret from Bailey, and the two siblings grow apart. Maya spends most of her time at the library and doesn't tell anyone about her abuser. 

One spring day, months after the second instance of abuse, when Bailey and Vivian are not at home, Mr. Freeman, sitting in a chair with his pants unzipped, asks Maya to approach him. She protests, and Mr. Freeman forcefully pulls her to him, turns on the radio, and rapes her. Maya passes out from the pain, and when she wakes up, Mr. Freeman is washing her in the bathroom.

Afterward, he immediately sends her to the library. On her way there, she feels as if her hips are "coming out of their sockets" (79) and finds it unbearable to sit on the hard benches of the library, so she soon returns home. Maya quickly hides her stained underwear under the mattress and goes to bed. When Vivian sees that her daughter is sick and has no appetite, she assumes that the child is coming down with measles and fusses over her. Mr. Freeman approaches Maya when no one is around and once again threatens to kill Bailey if she tells anyone about what he did.

Throughout the night, Maya hears Vivian and Mr. Freeman's incessant arguing, and in the morning, she learns that he moved out of the house. She wonders if is safe to tell Bailey about what Mr. Freeman has done to her, but she's sure that she "must have been very bad if already God let [her] hurt so much" (81). Vivian decides to give Maya a bath and to change her sheets. When she asks Bailey to pull the sheets off the bed, Maya's stained underwear falls at Vivian's feet.