A shift in locale alters the tempo of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. From the microcosm of Stamps to that of Caroline Street in St. Louis, Maya and Bailey travel light-years away from the simplistic morality and Bible-decreed fundamentalism of Grandmother Annie Henderson to the seamy, potentially violent underworld precinct superintended by Grandmother Baxter. Given their firm Southern upbringing and academic promise, Maya and Bailey cope well with school. At home, they continue to marvel at their sybaritic mother, the kind of woman Angelou epitomizes in Now Sheba Sings the Song as "Lip smacking, finger snapping, toe tapping / Shoulder bouncing, hip throwing, breast thrusting, eye flashing, / Love of good and God and Life." A foil to her inarticulate, cunning three older brothers, Vivian moves Maya and Bailey to the house she shares with her paramour, Mr. Freeman, to make a weak attempt at motherhood.
Perpetually insecure, Maya, who suffers from nightmares and at times longs to be a boy, perceives herself as a temporary guest among her Baxter relatives. Ironically, retreat to her mother's bed places her in immediate jeopardy—alongside the lustful child ravisher who eventually annihilates her innocence. In recounting the violation, Maya resorts to euphemisms that she learned in Stamps: "thing" for "penis" and "pocketbook" for "vagina." The supporting images—helpless piglets awaiting slaughter, the "inside of a freshly killed chicken," and even fears that Mr. Freeman will die from sexual ecstasy—replicate the silent death that later reduces Maya to a near zombie-like state.
Unaccustomed to fatherly attentions, the naive Maya, held fast in strong arms, fantasizes that Mr. Freeman is her real parent. In a bitter anticlimax, her abuser rolls over, "leaving [her] in a wet place" and blaming her for urinating on the bed. Doleful because she faces yet another rejection, she fears that he will never cuddle her again. From the clarity of adult perspective, Angelou concludes: "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."
