More strides toward independence bring Maya closer to self-knowledge. Parallel urges drive Bailey into irreconcilable conflict with Vivian. Maya's impotence to intercede impels her to seek an outside job to escape the misery of a home without Bailey. The set piece that plays out between Maya and the Market Street Railway Company receptionist demonstrates a new savoir faire in Maya, who denies to be brushed off by mere racism. With a surprising show of charity, she accepts the receptionist as a fellow victim of racism, which refuses employment to black applicants.
The tour de force of becoming San Francisco's first black trolley conductor fails to quell Maya's yearning for some kind of success and proof of womanhood. The decision to have sex with a neighborhood boy ends "youth's vague malaise" and leaves her pregnant after a single intimacy. Trusting to faulty logic ("if I could have a baby I obviously wasn't a lesbian") and deception, she weathers impending motherhood alone in a state of denial, "in which days seemed to lie just below the water level, never emerging fully." The eventual bonding with her three-week-old son produces a satisfaction that she has sought throughout her bumpy adolescence.
