Vivian Baxter
Affectionately known as Bibbie, Vivian, who is "Mother Dear" to her children, captivates Maya with her bold red lipstick, white teeth, Lucky Strikes, and "fresh-butter color [that] looked see-through clean." Not too prim to bash in Pat Patterson's head with a police club or shoot a two-timing business partner with her .32, she is the most lighthearted of the grim, vindictive Baxters and covers her criminal acts with a nonchalant charm, fairness, and gaiety that bobs this side of reality, walling her off from guilt at sending her children away during crucial stages of their lives. Trained as a nurse, she earns her living "cutting poker games in gambling parlors," sometimes to the detriment of her children.
Uncle Willie
Anchored to a rubber-tipped cane and shaped like a "giant black Z" from being dropped by a babysitter when he was three years old, Uncle Willie suffers a withered left hand and distortion of muscles that pull down the left side of his face. Even more painful are the gibes of jokesters who ridicule his impairment. To facilitate counter work at the store, he leans on a special shelf. His desire for upright manhood strikes compassion in Maya.
Grandfather Baxter
Speaking his choppy West Indian dialect, Grandfather Baxter, ever in the shadow of his politically astute wife, contrasts her "throaty German accent." An invalid from the mid-1930s, he continues receiving his grandchildren at his bedside and dies a few years after Maya's return to Stamps.
Grandmother Baxter
A quadroon or octoroon, Grandmother Baxter, raised by Germans in Cairo, Illinois, was working as a nurse at Homer G. Phillips Hospital when she met Grandfather Baxter. A doughty, pragmatic precinct leader who conducts shady dealings in a thick German dialect with gracious, ladylike manners, Grandmother operates so smoothly that she glides over the matter of Mr. Freeman's murder and on to her granddaughter's health as if a gangland-style execution were business as usual. When Maya next encounters her, Grandmother Baxter, ramrod straight and adorned with pince-nez glasses, suffers chronic bronchitis and continues to smoke heavily while sharing her granddaughter's bed.
Baxter Uncles
Vivian's three older brothers — Tutti, Tom, and Ira, the oldest — notable young men with jobs in St. Louis, stand out from younger brother, Billy, by their "unrelenting meanness," which compels them to avenge Maya's rape by kicking Mr. Freeman to death. Uncle Tommy, gruff like his father, consoles Maya for not being pretty by reminding her that she is smart.
