Ruth Granger
Hall's wife, and the household he narrates from — with their children Tony and Odessa.
The book
At a glance
- Hall Montana's wife; the household the novel is narrated from
- Forty-two
- At twenty-seven, pregnant with Tony; Hall was thirty-three
- Tony, fifteen; Odessa, thirteen
- At a party, introduced by a former colleague of hers, Roy Furlong
Who they are in the book
Spoiler-freeRuth Granger is an invented character in James Baldwin's Just Above My Head, and the wife of the novel's narrator, Hall Montana. She is forty-two. They married when she was twenty-seven and pregnant with their son Tony, and Hall was thirty-three; their daughter Odessa is thirteen.
The house she runs is where the book is narrated from. Almost all of the present-tense chapters take place there over one Sunday, with Ruth cooking, dancing with her son, sitting with Julia Miller over coffee and photographs, and driving the children into the city for a matinee. Hall calls her the first real commitment he ever made outside his commitment to his brother.
How the book draws them
- How they metAt a party, where a man named Roy Furlong, who had worked with her, introduced them: this is Ruth Granger, this is Hall Montana. She had been listening to Furlong talk business from around a corner and told him so to his face, then took Hall's arm and walked him back into the crowd.
- The bagHall's first detailed observation of her is the shoulder bag, which he calls rather menacing, and shifts to the opposite shoulder so that she can take his arm. His conclusion is that she was accoutered for any improbability.
- BuildNot fat, she says, but big-boned and solid. Hall is taller than she is and less heavy. She tells him Tony will end up heavy like her, whatever he currently looks like, because she looked worse than he does at his age.
- How she runs the houseFrom the living room, without getting up. When Tony threatens to kill his sister in the kitchen, she shouts back that if the two of them do not come out she will come in and kill them both, and that she has the butcher knife; then she goes back to her book.
- The morning of the newsShe had gone out shopping on a Thursday with the children at school. She came back to find her husband naked and flat on his back on the bathroom floor with his razor still in his hand, and the telephone ringing.
- What she noticed about ArthurThat he had virtually no clothes. Hall records it as a crucial matter and credits her with being the first to point it out — before Arthur was a star, when he thought of himself as dressed and was, in fact, merely covered.
- What Jimmy calls herMother Mattie. He kisses her on arrival, calls her that, and then goes to the kitchen to feed everybody.