Clean Getaway

G’ma is the driving factor behind the journey across the country. She is a spry, white woman who is excited to be taking a trip with her grandson. She is also one who has a more complicated background than one might imagine. Her father left her family when she was young and her mother passed away. Ultimately, Ruby Jean felt like life was unfair, and this led her to begin stealing jewelry. As she tells Scoob at one point in the novel

“it was my way of gettin' back at the world. Just the thought of all the things I’d taken—silly trinkets I knew folks valued more than they did other beings—it made me feel powerful. Felt good to be bad. And no one suspected the pretty blonde girl with the “megawatt” smile being a professional jewel thief” (193).

Indeed, this connects directly to the theme of The Negative Effects of Racial Stereotyping. Instead of suspecting Ruby Jean, the police immediately focus on James, who is already in danger because of the color of his skin as a Black man.

G’ma grows less and less lucid throughout the book, especially with her increasing propensity of calling “Scoob” “Jimmy.” By its end, she is bedridden, having concealed cancer from Jimmy and Scoob.

G’ma herself wants to take her “chance at redemption” by completing the trek she and Jimmy set out on in the 1960s. This time, Scoob travels with her, not really understanding why they’re making each stop, but, regardless, he is along for the ride, trying to get away from home. G’ma’s troubles bother her so much that she sleepwalks and talks, which is how Scoob discovers some information she is hiding. In the end, it is not her who finishes the trip but Scoob, and he brings her ashes with him so that he can feel G’ma’s presence. G’ma receives her closure through Scoob.

Jimmy is G’ma’s late husband. They met because Jimmy was working at a gas station where G’ma stopped one day. G’ma didn’t know it at the time, but Jimmy was stealing money from the gas station, though she would later learn. On the other hand, Jimmy was unaware that G’ma herself had a stash of stolen jewelry. Together, they sought to flee Atlanta and go to Mexico, but because G’ma discovered she was pregnant with Jimmy, they decided to turn around and return to Atlanta since they knew that they would be able to find care for James there.

By the time that James was born, Jimmy had been arrested, taking the fall for both his embezzlement and for G’ma’s stolen jewelry. She never went to visit him in prison, and he died there. As a result, she wishes to make up for her mistakes by finally making it to Mexico.

Throughout the novel, Scoob learns about the danger and difficulties that his grandfather faced, especially through the lens of the Green Book. When Scoob first receives it, he realizes “his grandfather had needed a book that listed ‘safe’ places to do something as simple as get gas back in the day […] Because he was black” (32). He also hears G’ma recount her fear that G’pop would be arrested or even killed when the RV was pulled over by police along their journey.

Additionally, Scoob learns the truth about his G’ma and G’pop. Prior to the novel’s start, he heard from James that G’pop was a “low-life criminal,” but he begins to question this perception of Jimmy after hearing G’ma talk so fondly about him. Eventually, Scoob comes to understand his grandfather better, reconciling the fact that he was both a thief and G’ma’s “beloved Jimmy Senior” (38).