Why does marguerite start for the race track

Seeing her in the red vest and beret makes Eddie embarrassed in front of Joe. But Marguerite smiles and asks Eddie to step outside with her. When he does, there is a group of children waiting to shout happy birthday to him. Eddie is touched. He loves seeing Marguerite around children. Marguerite and the kids light 38 candles on top of the messy cake. A child pokes Eddie and tells him to blow them all out and once. She holds his hand and assures Eddie that it is really her, and he cries on her shoulder.

After he lost her, the rest of his days were dull. Now, Eddie is standing in front of his wife again. She is as young and beautiful as on their wedding day, not old and suffering like she was toward the end of her life.

She asks him to take a walk and lifts him effortlessly off of his injured knee. Eddie is tongue-tied. Marguerite motions around the Italian village they walk through. She says that she wanted a heaven with weddings behind every door because she loves to see the look of wonder in the eyes of the bride and groom.

She asks if Eddie believes they had that same sense of possibility. Walking on, Eddie asks Marguerite if she also met five people and if they were able to make a difference. She says that they did. He asks if she knows about his life since her own death. Carefully, she answers that she only knows what happened when they were together and why those things happened.

She also knows how much Eddie loved her. He tries to explain the ride, the accident, Dom, the little girl. She smiles and it fills him with sadness. Eddie and Noel left work at Ruby Pier to gamble at the race track. Upon hearing Mrs. One evening, Bailey stays out until well after dark. Willie and Momma do not mention their concern, but Momma takes Maya with her to search for Bailey. They find Bailey trudging home, but he does not offer an explanation for his lateness.

He stoically receives a severe whipping, and Maya notes that for days it seems like Bailey has no soul. Later Bailey explains to Maya that he was late because he had seen a movie starring a white actress, Kay Francis, who looked like Vivian, and he stayed late to watch the movie a second time.

They wait for weeks before another Kay Francis movie comes to the theater. Maya laughs at the irony of a beloved white actress looking just like her black mother. The movie delights Maya, but it saddens Bailey. On the way home, he frightens Maya by dashing across the tracks in front of an oncoming railway car. Maya wonders if Bailey would ever jump on one of the trains and go away.

A year later, he boards a boxcar, but succeeds only in stranding himself in Baton Rouge for two weeks. The annual revival meeting interrupts the harsh daily existence in Stamps.

People from all the black churches attend. This year, the preacher delivers a sermon admonishing those who practice false charity. At the beginning of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Maya is a precocious young girl suffering not just from the typical traumas associated with being black and female in America, but also from the trauma of displacement.

Smart and imaginative, Maya nevertheless feels that people judge her unfairly due to her ungainly appearance. The South presents Maya with three tremendous impediments: white prejudice, black powerlessness, and female subjugation.

In addition to these broad societal obstacles, Maya endures many personal traumas in her lifetime as well. As she is driving, two teenagers drop a whiskey bottle from the overpass above her, into her windshield. The impact shatters her windshield and causes her to crash into the concrete median. After the accident Marguerite was bed ridden but eventually healed.

She and Eddie became too old to adopt a child and a silence fell between them; Eddie stopped betting on the horses and eventually stopped seeing Noel as a result of his guilt. Marguerite eventually was overcome by cancer and passed away at age Back in heaven, Eddie and Marguerite walk through the different weddings and spend much time talking.

Marguerite leads Eddie through many different wedding receptions, in this chapter.