The double-ended tragicomic scenario involving Maya's aching tooth epitomizes Angelou's ability to interweave serious theme with gentle humor. Against the cruelty and lack of professionalism of a dentist (ironically named Dr. Lincoln) who would vilify a suffering child and refuse her medical attention because of her race, the author inserts bits of hyperbole and personification:
"I prayed earnestly that I'd be allowed to sit under the house and have the building collapse on my left jaw."
"I had frozen to the pain, my family nearly had to tie me down to take the toothbrush away."
". . . the pain was my world, an aura that haloed me for three feet around."
"If one was dying, it had to be done in style if the dying took place in whitefolks' part of town."
"How could one or two or even a mouth of angry tooth roots meet a wagonload of powhitetrash children, endure their idiotic snobbery and not feel less important?"
A greater irony rests on the fact that, during the Depression, Annie Henderson served as unofficial small business loan officer to blacks and whites. Because Dr. Lincoln was one of the recipients of her largesse, she expects a reciprocity that he is unwilling to provide. Not only must she identify herself with the disrespectful use of her first name and endure the haughty white attendant's shutting the door in her face, she must counter her granddaughter's degradation and dehumanization when the dentist sneers, "I'd rather stick my hand in a dog's mouth than in a nigger's." In the aftermath, Annie takes some of the sting from the incident by glorying in her modest retribution — the extortion of ten extra dollars in purported interest.
