Fire in the Ashes

Vicky was an emotionally-vulnerable woman who lived in different shelters, among them the Martinique, with her son, Eric, and younger child, Lisette. At a time when she was struggling with anxiety, she was housed in the Martinique and witnessed horrific situations around her and her children. Her mother had died when she was 5, and she was raised by a guardian who made her drop out of school and clean houses from a very young age.

Later, she moved to Mott Haven, in the Bronx, and after that, because of a grant by a church whose members were familiar with Kozol’s work, she moved to Montana with Eric and Lisette. She at first did well and had a steady job, and her daughter did well in Montana. However, trouble followed her struggling son, she began to drink, and her son, without confessing how sad he was, killed himself. She later succumbed to pancreatic cancer and was buried in South Carolina, where Lisette was thriving with her husband and children.

Pietro, whose wife was killed by a jealous lover, lived in the Martinique with his son, Christopher, his own mother, and his daughters, Miranda and Ellie. He later lived in the Bronx, where he tried to provide a good life for his children. He lived with cats and a duck named Oscar in an attempt to provide something fun for his children, and he and his mother always made sure their daughters went to school in clean clothes (even when they had to wash their clothes in the sink because they could not afford to go to the laundry). Christopher dropped out of school and developed a defiance towards his father. Pietro developed a degenerative disease and died shortly before his mother. Christopher served time in jail, and though he had a good job when he came out of jail, he died from a drug overdose. The girls, who had been younger, were able to forge lives and have families. 

Kozol first met Pineapple when she was an outspoken kindergartener who nicely told him he needed better clothing and that his black garments conveyed his sense of sadness. She invited Kozol to her family’s new year party in the Bronx, where he met her parents, who were from Guatemala. With the intervention of Kozol and Martha, the priest at St. Ann’s church, Pineapple was able to get a scholarship to a private Manhattan middle school, where she struggled mightily to improve her skills.

She then went on to a private high school in Rhode Island, where she continued to struggle but also continued to improve her skills and overcome the poor education she had had in the Bronx. Her parents and older sister, Lara, also wound up moving to Rhode Island, where her sister attended college. Her father had a problem with his green card and had to return to Guatemala, and her mother also returned there. Pineapple and her sisters, Lara and Mosquito, raised her brother and worked to send him to school. After graduation, the ever-idealistic Pineapple hoped to become a social worker and with Lara, who hoped to be a teacher, improve conditions for children in the South Bronx.