Grandma Character Analysis

Grandmother to Jerome and Kim Rogers, Grandma cooks, cleans, and babysits her grandchildren to keep the Rogers household running smoothly while Jerome and Kim’s parents, Ma and Pop, work long hours. As a young girl in the South, Grandma dropped out of grade school to babysit her little siblings. Though she now lives in Chicago, Grandma strongly identifies with Southern culture and religious beliefs. For example, she believes in ghosts, premonitory dreams, and in the magical significance of the number three. The day that Jerome is shot, she tells him she had a frightening dream about him and asks him to tell her three good things as a good-luck gesture. When a white police officer, Officer Moore, shoots Jerome after mistaking the toy gun he’s holding for a real firearm, Grandma is the only member of the Moore family who can sense that Jerome’s ghost is still with them—though she can’t see or hear him. She tries to encourage Jerome to move on to the afterlife. Due to her fears over Kim’s safety after Jerome is killed, Grandma begins walking her granddaughter to and from school every day. She is joined by Carlos, a new boy at Jerome’s school who befriended him the day of his death, and eventually comes to see Carlos as a kind of second grandson. After Carlos sobbingly admits that he lent Jerome the toy gun that precipitated Officer Moore shooting Jerome, Grandma hugs him—and forgives Kim for not telling her either. At the novel’s end, Grandma, Kim, and Carlos have become very close, and Carlos’s and Jerome’s families celebrate the Day of the Dead by picnicking together at Jerome’s grave.