Summary
Set in Chicago, Illinois, and narrated in the first person by the novel’s protagonist, Jerome Rogers, Ghost Boys opens with Jerome viewing the scene of his death from the afterlife. A ghost, Jerome stoops to look at his dead body as it lies on the concrete. He’d turned to run from the police when two bullets hit him and he fell on the snowy ground. He sees his mother wailing and gasping at the scene but can’t hear her. More and more people come to view the scene. The cops shout at people to stay back. People take videos and photos; they curse and cry. Jerome says nobody ever paid him any attention. Now he is famous. A Chicago Tribune newspaper headline quotes a police officer as saying, “I had no choice!” and “He had a gun.” Jerome is identified as a twelve-year-old shot at the abandoned Green Street lot.
The story goes back in time to when Jerome was alive. On the morning of December 8, he is having pancakes at home with Ma, Grandma, and his little sister, Kim. Jerome is pudgy and gets teased, but he knows he’ll grow up to be loved by all, like President Obama. Jerome says his mother works as a hotel receptionist at a Holiday Inn, while his father is a sanitation officer whose shift starts at 4 a.m. Jerome’s grandmother has been having “premonitions” that something bad is going to happen. She makes Jerome tell her three good things to ease her worry.
Kim and Jerome walk to school. Jerome says Green Street isn’t peaceful or green, either. The neighborhood is full of brick houses, some abandoned, and unemployed men play cards on the street while drinking beer hidden by paper bags. In the spot of a former meth lab house that burned down, there is a pathetic basketball court someone tried to make. Kim and Jerome cross the street to avoid the drug dealers they see trading powder and pills for cash. Jerome comments that he tries to stay near adults at school to avoid the bullies, who like to push him, hit him, and pull down his pants. As Kim, who is popular, goes off to join her friends, the bullies Mike, Eddie, and Snap appear with fists clenched. Jerome decides to hide in the bathroom at lunch.
Moving ahead to when Jerome is dead, he attends his own wake at his family’s apartment. He says, “If everyone wasn’t so sad-faced, I’d swear it was a party.” He reaches for cornbread, but his hand passes through it. He watches his mother crying while sitting on his bed. He feels pain and anger inside, but outside feels nothing, like he is air. He is reassured to see Kim reading, which she does whenever the neighbors fight or when she can hear gunshots outside. Jerome tries to tell his father and grandmother that he is still there. Grandma looks up, as if she can see or hear him.
When Reverend Thornton suggests the family should pray with him, Pa slams his fist in the wall and says there’s no point because Jerome isn’t coming back. Thornton says he is in a better place. Grandma says, “Every goodbye ain’t gone. … Every black person in the South knows it’s true. Dead, living, no matter. Both worlds are close. Spirits aren’t gone.” Thornton says that’s nonsense superstition. Pa says he’s going to sue the white officers who walk around alive and free. Grandma says it’s just like with Emmett Till’s murder in 1955, adding that he was also a Chicago boy. Pa reminds them of Tamir Rice in 2014, another boy shot just because he’s Black. Pa says, “Since slavery, white men been killing Blacks.” Later that night, Jerome meets the ghost of another dead Black boy, who appears briefly to say, “Time to wake up,” before departing again.
Jerome says it’s awful waiting around the apartment, unable to sleep. All he can do is observe his family also struggling to get to sleep. Grandma hums gospel songs and seems to sense when Jerome moves. He wishes he were alive, and she was ordering him to do chores and stop watching TV. On the day of Jerome’s funeral, Ma quotes Emmett Till’s mother, saying, “An open casket. I want the whole world to see what they did to my boy.” When they get out of the black Cadillac they ride to the funeral in, Grandma whispers to Jerome that it’s time to get going. He is stunned to hear her address him directly.
Jerome’s friend Carlos is there with his parents. Carlos wants to give Pa something, but he doesn’t hear. Instead, he gives the piece of paper to Grandma, who presses the paper to her heart and then hugs Carlos. Outside the church, the ghost of Emmett Till appears to warn Jerome not to go inside, saying he doesn’t want to see. He wears old-timey clothing: a white shirt with a tie and a brimmed hat. He disappears when Jerome reaches to touch him.
Returning to December 8, when Jerome was alive, Jerome recounts how Carlos is introduced to the class by their teacher, Mr. Myers. Carlos is from San Antonio, Texas. Jerome knows the teacher is only making it worse for Carlos by making him stand out as new; new kids are “beat-down magnets” for bullies. Carlos sits next to Jerome. At lunch he catches up with Jerome, who shows him how to rush through the cafeteria, grabbing stuff you carry and avoiding anything mushy or that requires a plate. He shows Carlos where he eats lunch: an upper-floor toilet stall. He explains that you have to keep your feet on the toilet seat so no one can see under the door and know you’re there. Carlos asks if they are friends; Jerome doesn’t reply, knowing it is dangerous to make allegiances at Bearden Middle School, because your friends’ fights become your fights.
Soon the bullies come in and start testing the stall doors. Carlos’s door slams open because he neglected to lock it. When Jerome hears Carlos being harassed, Jerome unlocks his door and tells them to leave Carlos alone. Carlos fights back, leading to the bullies knocking him down and kicking him. Jerome threatens to tell on them, even if it makes him a snitch. The bullies turn their attention to him, threatening to kill him if he snitches. Everyone stops when they see Carlos has a gun.
Four months after his death, Jerome attends the preliminary hearing at the courthouse. The judge informs the court that a preliminary hearing isn’t meant to decide guilt or innocence but to determine whether there is enough evidence to charge Officer Moore with a crime. Jerome looks at the police officer in the dock. He has sandy-brown hair and glazed blue eyes. Moore, when questioned, explains that he felt threatened by Jerome, who he believed to be a twenty-five-year-old man with a real gun. He didn’t know it was a twelve-year-old with a toy gun. He says Jerome was “big, hulking. Scary.” Jerome’s father stands and shouts incredulously that two grown men were threatened by a child. The judge yells for order. Amid the chaos of people in the courtroom shouting, Officer Moore’s daughter tells Jerome she can see him. Jerome is annoyed and wonders why it can’t be Kim who sees him.
Analysis
In the opening chapter of Ghost Boys, author Jewell Parker Rhodes establishes the novel’s supernatural premise. Fatally shot by police, Jerome Rogers, the book’s narrator and protagonist, witnesses the aftermath of his own death. A ghost now, Jerome observes his distressed mother among the outraged people who come to see what has happened. In an instance of situational irony, Jerome comments that while he was unremarkable in life, he is famous now that he is dead.
In the second chapter, Rhodes hints at the major theme of systemic racism with a Chicago Tribune newspaper headline that quotes the police officer who shot Jerome. In the quote, the officer alleges that Jerome had a gun; in the officer’s eyes, this factor justifies the killing of a boy of twelve. By not including the rest of the article, Rhodes puts a question in the reader’s mind: How did a twelve-year-old boy wind up threatening a police officer with a gun?
With a move back in time to before Jerome was killed, Rhodes introduces the back-and-forth structure of the narrative. Oblivious to what will happen to him after school, Jerome has a pleasant morning eating pancakes at home with his grandmother and sister. The theme of support arises as Jerome comments on his responsibility as the one who reassures Grandma when she is feeling worried. In an instance of dramatic irony, the reader knows something Jerome and the other characters have yet to learn: Grandma’s belief that something bad is about to happen is warranted.
Rhodes introduces the theme of social and economic inequality with the children’s walk to school. Living in an impoverished Chicago neighborhood, Jerome and Kim pass alcoholics and open-air drug deals on their way to school. The closest thing to a playground is a sad basketball hoop erected in the void where a meth lab exploded; Jerome considers it a paltry attempt at investment in public space. Ultimately, the neighborhood’s association with poverty and criminality will prove significant as Officer Moore justifies his fear of Jerome in part because of the neighborhood Jerome lives in.
At Jerome’s wake, Rhodes builds further on the themes of the afterlife. Able to watch his family mourn, Jerome futilely tries to assure his family that he hasn’t gone on to a better place, as the reverend suggests. In an instance of dramatic irony, the reader and Jerome know Grandma is right about spirits being closer than they think, as Jerome is in the room with them. However, Jerome has yet to comprehend why his spirit is lingering.
Rhodes answers some of the reader’s questions about how Jerome came to have a gun when Jerome narrates the circumstances of his friendship with Carlos. On the day he died, Jerome risked his own safety by providing support and companionship to a transfer student who was sure to attract the bullies’ attention. Much to Jerome’s and the bullies’ surprise, Carlos pulls out a gun to break up the fight in the toilet stalls. How it comes to be in Jerome’s possession is another question Rhodes puts in the reader’s head.
The theme of systemic racism arises again when Officer Moore takes the stand at a preliminary hearing. Not a trial itself, the preliminary hearing is an opportunity to interview witnesses and determine whether the state should lay criminal charges against a person. Jerome’s family and supporters erupt in anger when the white officer claims he believed Jerome was an adult of twenty-five with a real weapon. Describing the boy as big and scary, Moore makes it sound as though Jerome is unnaturally large for his age. As the book goes on, though, both Moore and the reader will discover how racial bias contributes to Moore’s fatal misjudgment.
