Masterfully melding her tone from raucous naughty fun into the grim and everpresent menace of white violence against the imagined threat from black sexuality, the author foreshadows Maya's childhood ambivalence toward men. Intuitively, she eludes the embrace of Reverend Howard Thomas, a persistent mooch at the Henderson table, but revels in Bailey's eavesdropping on the minutiae of local gossip about sexual misconduct that the minister shares with Momma. The high quality of imagery captures the color and flavor of ample Sunday morning breakfasts, particularly the menu: crunchy fried perch, tomato slices drenched in ham drippings, and cathead biscuits which, if allowed to cool during the minister's overlong table blessings, "tended to a gooeyness, not unlike a wad of tired gum."
Angelou's skill at recreating the fervor of Southern black fundamentalism retreats from dogma to the unremitting humor of Sister Monroe's ebullient counterpoint against the elder's sermon. The duet, an unrehearsed, madcap Laurel-and-Hardy act which leaves churchgoers "hung loose like stockings on a washline," convulses the children, who, riveted to the front-row mourners' bench in sight of Momma and Uncle Willie, explode in uncontrollable laughter. Amid the furor of a worship service gone awry, the young Maya reveals a significant emotional defense, the ability to "not see or hear if [she] chose not to do so," a protective armor which foreshadows her later ego defense mechanism against the terror and guilt of rape. In contrast to her self-induced limbo of emotions, by the end of the scene, she breaches the slim divider that separates laughter and tears. She notes, "Laughter so easily turns to hysteria for imaginative children. I felt for weeks after that I had been very, very sick."
