Fire in the Ashes

In this chapter, Kozol profiles Ariella Patterson, a woman who was stronger than Vicky and Pietro and who had become homeless when her house had caught on fire. She started living in an Emergency Assistance Unit (EAU), a temporary shelter where people lived in undivided rooms, before she moved into the Martinique, which she describes as “a nightmare. It was hell on earth” (83).

She was eventually moved to Mott Haven in the Bronx in a relatively new building that was near the depressing complex of houses called the Diego-Beekman Houses. Funded by public money, these houses, run by a private company, were cited for numerous infractions. The owner, a man named Gerald Schuster from Boston, gave money to political candidates to clean up his image, which was tarnished by the death of a child named Bernardo who had fallen into the elevator shaft in one of his buildings.

Ariella was able to find a supervisory position for a chain of clothing stores, a position for which she earned $16,000 a year—twice the average income in Mott Haven. When she moved into the neighborhood, her older son, Silvio, was 12, and her younger son, Armando, was almost 9. On her days off, she took them to the museums and restaurants of Manhattan, trying to let them know that they weren’t defined by their neighborhood.

However, these escapes were episodic in nature, and the horrors Silvio had witnessed left an imprint on him. Silvio got into trouble at school, destroying property and smoking pot in the bathroom. When he was still in middle school, he started having sex and stealing things. He believed he was invincible and worshipped the character Scarface, from the film of the same name. Silvio’s mother put him in a group home, but he became more defiant and asked to return home. Another boy cut him with a boxcutter, and he needed sixty-seven stitches to reassemble his face. He regarded this scar as a badge of honor. Silvio was put in another group home but ran away. He ran out of his apartment and rode the trains with his friends. He climbed out on the roof of the train car, and, when he lifted his head to wave to his friends, he was hit by a steel girder and fell between the subway cars. He died at age 14.

Ariella struggled to care for her other son, Armando, and cut back on her hours working. Even after his brother’s death, Armando regarded Silvio as a hero. Armando began to take small amounts of money from the neighborhood drug dealers, who were cultivating him to enter the drug trade. Diagnosed with learning issues, he received no help at his failing public schools and dropped out before the end of ninth grade. He became a drug courier and then began selling drugs. He was arrested with a weapon but released into his mother’s custody, and he was then arrested for possession of heroin and cocaine. He served four-and-a-half years in jail and was addicted to heroin when he came out of jail. Because of parole violations, he went to Rikers Island seven times over the next four years. While in prison, he married a woman he had known since he was 13, and they had two kids. When he was taken back to jail, it was his daughter Inocencia’s birthday, and the police took him away while his daughter watched. He swore to his mother never to miss another of his children’s birthdays, and he changed at that moment. When he got out of jail, his wife began working and getting off welfare, while Armando took care of the kids.

Ariella had two younger children. She sent her son, Stephen, to a better school and for treatment for depression at Mount Sinai Hospital, something that she had not done with the two older boys. He began at a two-year college and worked as a tutor at St. Ann’s while preparing to return to school. Ariella’s youngest son was a serious student, and Ariella had become a devoted member of St. Ann’s and had organized an anti-gun campaign. Though she had renewed confidence, she lived with the memories of having lost her oldest son.