Following the contretemps with local police, Maya faces greater uproar after Bailey's self-absorption and insensitivity goads Dolores to desperation. His hypocrisy in concealing the fracas to protect his position as "a Mason, an Elk, a naval dietician and the first Negro deacon in the Lutheran church" indicates that he is more concerned with social appearances than with Maya's discomfort, terror, and possible complications from the stab wound. In contrast, Maya, remembering the Baxter family's quick dispatching of Mr. Freeman and fearful of a second eruption of family vengeance, chooses to keep her wound secret from Vivian and to trust native survival skills by running away. Her choice, which is appropriate to teen logic, relieves her tensions and accords some temporary autonomy, which her wounded pride sorely needs.
Bolstered by a lack of parental restraint, like a "loose kite in a gentle wind floating with only my will for an anchor," Maya sleeps away her fears in a junked car and awakens to a multiracial group of other teenage runaways as independent as she. Together, she and the gang enjoy the illusion of total freedom while cadging free baths at one gang member's house. Crediting the experience with initiating her "into the brotherhood of man," she gains new insight into tolerance and trust. Back in San Francisco, believing that she has discredited Dolores' assertion that her mother is a whore, Maya — her displacement at an end — sinks into the satisfaction of costly gains achieved on the way to womanhood.
