Fire in the Ashes: Twenty-Five Years Among the Poorest Children in America

by Jonathan Kozol

  Some comfort may be derived from the news that the violent middle school Jeremy attended was shut down in 1999. Two smaller middle schools now occupy the building. But the new schools apparently have problems of their own. At one of them, only 14 percent of students are reading at grade level—at the other, 12 percent. None of these schools, large or small, is offering the kind of education that the children of the neighborhood deserve.

  High schools in the Bronx continue to suffer from catastrophic noncompletion and nongraduation rates. The numbers for black male students are particularly bad. Citywide, 72 percent of black males entering the ninth grade have dropped out of school before the end of senior year or, if they remain in school, do not gain the academic competence to graduate, according to a 2010 report from the respected Schott Foundation for Public Education. That, it’s worth repeating, is the figure for New York as a whole. The failure rate for black males who go to high schools in the Bronx may be even worse.

  So long as very poor black and Hispanic children continue to be locked into nearly absolute racial isolation in underserved and underfunded schools, the innovative efforts of successive mayors and their appointed chancellors to create “successful” separate and unequal education in New York will likely be in vain. That, at least, is the lesson history has taught us ever since the benighted ruling in Plessy v. Ferguson was accepted as a proper guideline for the education of our children—which, in spite of its reversal in Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, is still effectively accepted and almost never questioned by those who run the New York City schools.

  I had a momentary glimpse of unrealistic hope when I heard about the artists and photographers and others who were moving into buildings on the southern fringes of Mott Haven. I wondered whether they would send their children, if they did have children, to the public schools attended by black and Hispanic students in the area. Figures from the New York City Board of Education indicate no such optimistic possibilities for now. Last year, at P.S. 30, zero percent of students were Caucasian. The same was true at P.S. 65.

  “You’ve been back to P.S. 65,” Ariella says, “You’ve seen the children coming out the door. Do you see white children?”

  – III –

  More than half a year has passed since I saw Pineapple last when she came back to visit us in Cambridge in the spring, but she’s kept in touch with me. In recent months she’s had a hard time with her health. Her phone calls and the texts and e-mails that she sends strike me as remarkable because they’ve been so cheerful and so optimistic, even while some of the news that she’s been giving me has not been good at all.

  At the start of August, she told me she’d been tested by her doctor, because she’d been feeling weak and had some other symptoms that concerned him, “and he found out from the tests that I’m pre-diabetic.” But, she said, in a voice that didn’t sound alarmed at all, “he told me what I need to do, and I’m workin’ on it so I can be healthier.”

  Two weeks later, after she had further tests, the preliminary diagnosis was revised. “I have diabetes. I have to begin with my new medicine tonight.”

  The new medicine was not insulin, she said, but an oral medication—“I have to take two different pills, each of them once a day.” She’d been shown how to use what she called “the strips and prickers. … I have to do it twice a day to take a sample of my blood, but I can use the prickers twice. So I only have to use one pricker every day.”

  I would have thought most people would be knocked flat or, at least, disoriented for a time by the information she had just received. But she sounded organized and calm and seemed to have the regimen ahead of her under good control.

  I asked about her health insurance, which I more or less assumed would be provided by her college. But she told me, not without embarrassment, that she’d opted out of it a year before, “because it’s so expensive” and she didn’t think she’d ever need it at her age. The people at the college said she could apply to Medicaid for now.

  A week later: The social security office, she reported, had informed her that she didn’t qualify for government assistance. “Guess why?” she said. “Because I’m a college student! And, besides, they told me somebody with diabetes of the kind I have isn’t actually ‘disabled.’ ” So, she said, “in other words, they turned me down.”

  Pineapple was too dignified to ask for my financial help in getting through this crisis. But I told her right away I could take care of the monthly costs she faced until the next semester, when she’d be permitted to get on the college plan again. She sent me about seven e-mails to express her gratitude. I assured her that the money didn’t come from me but from readers of the books I’d written about people like herself when she was a child. So she was only getting back what was intended for her and the other children she grew up with in the Bronx.

  Pineapple is not naïve about the changes in her life—eating habits and the rest—that her diabetes will entail. But she keeps her head up high. And, in the midst of all of this, she hasn’t missed a day of class and she says she likes the courses that she’s taking this semester—“except for biology, where I’ve always had a problem. But I’m learning fast!”

  She tells me that Mosquito finished freshman year in college with a 3.8 grade-point average and is working this year as a resident assistant, and is playing basketball for her college team, on which, it seems, she’s something of a star. “She goes off almost every week for games with other schools.”

  Her brother, Miguel, she reports, “has made a lot of new friends here since he got back from Guatemala. Lara takes good care of him. She does more than I do, since I have to study hard and keep up with my classes.” He’s in the seventh grade at the school in Providence that they selected for him.

  Lara, meanwhile, “is doing really well.” Pineapple didn’t tell me whether Lara’s at the day care center still, but she says that Lara’s earning enough money to support her brother and herself and, Pineapple adds, helping me with college stuff when she can afford to.” Lara’s making plans, as she had intended, “to go back to school next year to get her certification as a teacher.”

  It’s not so much in the long and substantive messages she sends, or in the thoughtful updates on the status of her family, but in the lively little texts and e-mails she’s been dashing off every couple days, that I can see that old familiar joyfulness and affectionate good nature that appear to be impervious to any kind of serious discouragement.

  “Heyyy Jonathan! I hope all is well. How’s the new book going? School is going fine for me. Still having troubles in my bio class but I’m sure I’m going to pass. Hope I get to see you soon. Just wanted to say Hi!”

  “Good morning, Jonathan. How ARE you guys? Just wanted you to know I’m real exciteddddd by the English class I’m taking. Also Poly Sci. Also in the process of looking for a second job. Miss you tons. Luv, P.”

  “Heyyy Jonathan! I hope all is going good. I tried to reach you yesterday, but I had no luck. I know you’re working on your book. Hope it’s coming along okay. Pleeez make yourself take off some time to have a little fun. …”

  “Dear Jonathan, I am NOT mad at you for not calling back. I just got worried when I didn’t hear. Lily told me that you’re crashing on your book. Believe me, I can understand. Late nite papers. … Okay! Got to get to my new job. …”

  “Hi you guys! I had a nice weekend with my brother and my sister on her birthday. Except for a couple bumps, of which I will say no more. My father says HELLO FROM GUATEMALA.”

  Pineapple’s good spirits help to bring me back to solid ground when I’m having difficulties with my work. As always, she gets peevish about maddening frustrations like the problem that she had about her health insurance. But she doesn’t often fall into the grim and gloomy moods that afflict so many other people who receive disturbing news. Or, in any case, she doesn’t let herself stay grim for very long. Soon enoug
h, she climbs out of those moods, like someone in a running race who may stumble and fall down but springs right up again and thrusts a fist—“I’m not beaten yet!”—way up in the air. And, at those times when she can tell I’m in a gloomy mood, she reprimands me properly.

  When I spoke to her last week, she detected instantly a sound of weariness within my voice and asked me whether anything was wrong.

  “I’m fine,” I said. I explained that I was simply having trouble finishing my book. I said I wasn’t sure how much had changed back in the neighborhood where she and I had met, but I told her I kept going back and forth on this, because I didn’t want to end up on a dreary note.

  “Jonathan,” she said, “I want you to think positive. Lara and I are going to go back and help to change things once we both have our degrees. You know? Make little changes that we can? If lots of people do that, then the changes won’t be little anymore.”

  I said, “I’m going to steal those words.”

  “Do it!” she said. And she asked if I remembered something that I told her once when we were walking by the water near her parents’ home. “You know? Picking battles that we have a chance to win? And not getting frozen up and flustered in your mind by things that are too big for you and me to change, not at least for now. Which isn’t any use to anyone at all.”

  I said, “I think I’ll steal those words as well.”

  “Do it!” she said a second time. “You’re the one who said that to me anyway. I’ll give it back to you for free.” She laughed. “I’m only teasing you. …

  “Wow! You know? It’s been too long. Once you’re finished with the book, I’m coming back to visit you. And I think I’d like to stay a few more days than last time. I know that sounds a little pushy, but I like to hang around there in the kitchen with you guys. And, besides, we’ve got a lot to talk about. You know?”

  An Invitation to the Reader

  The small discretionary fund that has assisted some of the children and a few of the adults portrayed within these pages was established many years ago as a nonprofit charitable foundation with the help of readers of my books. Those who would like to learn more about this fund, or to help sustain it, are invited to contact the Education Action Fund, 16 Lowell Street, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138. Readers who would also like to be updated on the efforts of my colleagues, and myself, to bring about the changes in our public schools that would render philanthropic interventions marginal in their significance by providing equal opportunity to every child in this land, and on a nonselective basis, are welcome to write to the same address, or to contact us by e-mail at EdActInc@gmail.com.

  Acknowledgments

  In the course of working on this book, I have had the wonderful experience of being able to enlist many of the children who grew up in the Bronx as my active partners and researchers as I tell the stories of their later lives. Pineapple and her older sister, Lara, have helped me with a multitude of small corrections, and some very big ones, throughout the stages of this writing. So, too, did Jeremy, who updated me repeatedly on events that he observed first-hand and changes that he saw emerging in the streets around St. Ann’s. Lisette and Miranda have generously assisted me as well. The young man I call Angelo and my godson Benjamin have also helped me greatly in areas that draw upon their own awareness of the dangers they have now escaped but which continue to be present in the lives of those around them.

  The woman I call Ariella Patterson has also been unusually meticulous in helping me to check elusive details—time-factors, for example, and physical locations of various events, when I was in doubt. She’s also had no hesitation about leading me to reconsider the thematic emphases of certain portions of the early manuscript and the final version of this book, especially those narratives in which I try to understand the formative distortions that predisposed a number of the young men I’ve described to fall into the patterns that destroyed them.

  To all these people, young and old, and others whom I have not named, who trusted me to tell their stories and then became my colleagues in describing the entire context of the world in which they came of age and live today, I owe a debt of gratitude.

  I also want to thank two bright and energetic college undergraduates and literary scholars, Jacey Rubinstein and Julia Barnard, who studied this book with eagle eyes, and helped me to reconceive several of its chapters, when they came to Cambridge to work with me as interns. Both of them continued to assist me long after they completed their internships.

  Reverend Martha Overall examined all the sections of this book that portray the children with whom she’s remained in contact since the years when they were very young, as well as the sections that describe the details of her own career. I have, as in my other books about the children of the Bronx, been grateful for the absolute integrity and unflinching candor with which she has advised me and for the enduring dedication that she brings to bear in every aspect of her service to the disenfranchised and the poor.

  Steven Banks, the Legal Aid attorney to whom I’ve turned repeatedly beginning in the years when families in the homeless shelters were in need of his assistance, has helped me understand the workings of the courts and the legal status of young people in New York when they were arrested, or detained, or awaiting sentence. I’m grateful for the time he took in clarifying aspects of the penal system in which Angelo and others were entangled.

  I’m particularly indebted to my publishers at Crown for their kindness and forbearance in waiting all this time for a book I promised to them more than seven years ago. My special thanks to my intuitively sensitive and supportive editor, Vanessa Mobley.

  In writing about the inner lives and outward struggles of people who have trusted me for many years out of a sense of faith in my discretion and my loyalty, I have relied upon a gentle and judicious friend who had the rare capacity for guiding me through delicate decisions. Lily Jones came to work with me in Cambridge at the moment when I was about to launch into this book. From conception to completion, she has been not only a remarkable researcher and painstaking editor, the kind of ally every writer prays for. Even more important, as I was working on the stories of those children and adults who underwent the greatest tribulations or suffered most profoundly for the loss of those they loved, Lily has repeatedly uplifted me by her gift for seeing the redemptive aspects of their lives—an affirming quality not unlike the one that drew her to Pineapple.

  Young as she is, but wise beyond her years, Lily has been instrumental in the writing of this book and has brought a wealth of blessings to this author from a heart of gold and a soul of selfless generosity. Words cannot express my gratitude.

  NOTES

  CHAPTER 1: THE JOURNEY BEGINS

  000 number of children and families in the Martinique Hotel, Christmas 1985: Interviews with Thomas Styron, Robert Hayes, and others working at the National Coalition for the Homeless in New York, December 1985; New York Daily News, December 24, 1985; “Monthly Report,” Center for Immigration Studies, October and November 1986, June 1987.

  000 reference to author teaching in the black community of Boston: I described this in Death at an Early Age (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1967).

  000 asbestos in the Martinique Hotel: According to the New York Daily News (June 19, 1987), “A mountain of cancer-causing asbestos—illegally packed in open containers—was uncovered yesterday in the Martinique Hotel. … Dangerous asbestos-coated pipes were also found in the hotel’s lobby and on the sidewalk.” Also see New York Times, June 19, 1987.

  000 the relative of one of the two owners and his abusive treatment of women in the building: The social workers told me this with confidence, on the basis of their conversations with the relative, and indicated it was common knowledge. Several female tenants in the Martinique confirmed that it was true. The social workers who introduced me to the young man did not tell him, I assume, that I was a writter.

  000 garbage
bags to cover hotplates: Families were told by the hotel to hide their hotplates in drawers, but garbage bags were provided for those that would not fit. I describe this and other practices of the hotel’s management in Rachel and Her Children (New York: Crown, 1988).

  000 author’s book about the Martinique Hotel: Rachel and Her Children, cited above, was initially published in The New Yorker as The Homeless and Their Children on January 25 and February 1, 1988. The Nightline episode featuring the Martinique aired on March 21, 1988.

  000 manager of Martinique carred pistol on his ankle: Many residents of the Martinique spoke to me with apprehension of Sal Tuccelli’s gun, which I saw on one occasion. He usually carried it in an ankle holster or, according to the tenants, sometimes on his waist. See Rachel and Her Children, cited above, and my more recent book Ordinary Resurrections (New York: Crown, 2000). Also see Village Voice, April 1, 1986.

  000 journalists were not welcome in the building: Although they were not officially forbidden—CBS got into the building with a camera crew in 1986 (New York Times, April 21, 1986)—journalists faced resistance and hostility on the part of the guards and manager. Residents who spoke critically of the hotel to members of the media placed themselves at risk. According to a city employee, it was “an accepted understanding” that the hotel would find a way to justify the eviction of such tenants. See Rachel and Her Children, cited above.

  000 $8 million yearly for 400 families: See Rachel and Her Children, cited above. Investigative reporter William Bastone noted in the Village Voice (April 1, 1986), that $1,800 was “an accurate estimate” of the city’s monthly cost for housing a homeless family in the hotels controlled by the owners of the Martinique. The cost of housing the 400 families in the Martinique was in excess of $8 million yearly.