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.