Andre and I used to be friends. He moved out to our neighborhood from the city with his family when he was 9 and that's where we met. We were the same age, almost the same height, the same weight. We both liked basketball and baseball. All we knew was that we were both Knicks and Mets fans. We never thought about it in terms of black and white, him being from Brooklyn and me being from Garden City. We were just kids playing basketball.

We were too young to ride our bikes to the park downtown, so when we were little we just played ball on the street with a little hoop my dad rigged up in our driveway. Lots of times we played one on one with my sisters watching, pretending to be fans sitting in the bleachers, cheering. I remember those one on one games after school, the steady rhythm of the bouncing ball first in my hands and then in his, the manuevering, the scrambling, the struggle to get off that shot that in the end would prove that one of us was just a little bit better at it. For some reason, Andre always seemed a little more determined to get off that shot, and he won most of the games. I remember him bouncing that ball at the end of our driveway and grinning, saying: "I beat you, Jack. I beat you on your home court." Sometimes I would take that inside the house when my mom called me in for dinner, but then she would tell me: "Let him have this thing. Aren't you the one helping him with English and Math?" So I helped him with English and Math and he beat me in basketball, right through elementary school and into high school.

We used to say that his dad got lucky when he moved out to our block from the city, landing a highway maintenance job in our town. Sometimes we'd see his dad standing next to his truck on a street in the town, fixing a pothole or putting up a stop sign with a shovel in his hand, and I'd tell my dad: "Look, there's Mr. Smith," and we'd wave and he'd wave back. His mother worked as a check out lady in the supermarket. We'd check out our groceries at Mrs. Smith's register, and she would always smile and ask my mother how she was doing. Then she would smile down at me and ask: "You boys going to play ball today?" "After your homework," My mother would say in her sober voice, looking down at me.

They lived in the little cape cod at the end of our dead end street, the yard with the railroad tracks just beyond the back fence. On Saturday nights, when Andre and I would play ball after supper, his dad would come over to get him and he would talk to my dad. He'd stand there in the driveway with his hands in his pockets, talking about grasscutters or cars. My dad would try to say something funny and he would try to laugh. For my tenth birthday I asked my dad if he could take me to a ballgame at Shea Stadium; I wanted to see Tom Seaver pitch. When I told Andre about it he said he had never been to a game before. So I asked my dad if we could take him and he said: "Sure." So we went and sat up in the upper deck, behind home plate, eating our hot dogs. I remember all of us standing up and taking off our caps to sing the national anthem. I remember cheering for Tom Seaver and him cheering for Cleon Jones. Both of grinning when they won the game.

One summer we took him along with us to spend a week in our summer house out in Suffolk County. We had a little cottage out there on a couple of acres, and for us kids, it was paradise. We'd play hide and seek till it got too dark to see. I remember Andre marveling at all that grass, all those trees. He'd never seen so many trees, he told me one night. I remember thinking to myself, lying in bed, it's a wonderful thing that we're doing for him. It was something he would remember for the rest of his life, my mother said once. "He's such a nice boy," my mother said, "I hope it stays with him." "Yeah," my dad said, "They're a real, nice family."

Like I said, we didn't think much of it in those days. I'd never guess that Andre could get up tight about my dad. My dad's a cop, you see.

One thing I do remember is when our neighbor, Mr. Birch, came over to the fence to talk to my dad about them. Mr. Birch was from Switzerland. A retired machinist with a beautiful garden of roses, rhododendrons and lilies. One of those immaculate, emerald green lawns. A gazebo in his backyard. A lawn jockey in the front.

"What do you think of those people moving in over here?" he asked my father.

"What about it?" my dad said.

"Well, you know how they ruined the schools in the city," Mr. Birch said. "They bring crime. They take down the property values," he said, in his funny accent.

"I don't think these people are like that," my dad told him.

Mr. Birch shook his head and shot me a look, his eyes narrowing. "I see that boy is a friend of your son's. He comes over here a lot."

"He's a good kid," my dad told him.

"They're all good kids," Mr. Birch said. "That's what everyone says. But look at the news."

"They're just playing basketball over here, Mr. Birch," my dad told him.

"Just see that he doesn't come on my property," Mr. Birch snapped as he turned away. "Or I'll call the police."

After he left the fence and went back into his house, I went up to my dad. "Dad, what did he say about Andre? He said something about me and Andre."

My dad took a deep breath and frowned. "Some people are like that, son," he said.

I told Andre what Mr. Birch had said and he just bowed his head. "Yeah, I get that a lot," he said.

"From who?" I asked him.

"Some white people. Not you though," he said quickly, looking up at me and grinning. "You people are cool."

I looked at him and all of a sudden it seemed like he was standing on the other side of the world. We could play basketball together, we could watch Bugs Bunny together, but we couldn't do it comfortably, in the same place, side by side. It didn't matter if he was over at our place or I was over at theirs. Once Mrs. Smith said at that supermarket check out: "You boys are always over at your place. You can come over to our place too. Why don't you give your mom a break and come over to our place this afternoon?" My mother looked at me and said: "Is that what you want to do?" and I would shrug my shoulders. "OK," my mom said, "OK by me."

So we sat in his living room, watching Bugs Bunny and the Munsters, just like we did at my house. I remember his mother calling out to us from their kitchen. "You boys want any ice tea?"

"Sure thing, Mrs. Smith," I answered. "Your ice tea is the best I've ever had."

Andre shook his head at me and rolled his eyes. "Shoot," he said. "You don't have to tell my mama that. It'll go to her head."

"Andre," Mrs. Smith called out again, "Come in here and bring this glass of ice tea out to your friend."

When we were in middle school we were in the same American History class, and we listened to lectures about the Civil War and the Civil Rights movement together. Everyone in the class would sit silently, solemnly, listening to the teacher talk about emancipation and Dr. Martin Luther King, but most of the kids were stealing glances at Andre and the other black girl in the class. I don't know what he felt about that; I never asked him about it and he never said anything.

Towards the end of the spring we had to pick a topic for a term paper and I picked Lincoln and the emancipation proclamation. Andre's topic was Dr. King and the civil rights movement. Sometimes we'd sit in the library together reading our books, sometimes we'd work on writing the papers from our notes over at my house, sometimes over at his. I remember telling him about how Lincoln had freed the slaves as if I were bringing him news on a plantation in South Carolina. I told him of how 360,000 Union boys from the north had died so that he could be free. Everyone was on the same footing now, in theory. Any one of us could be an astronaut, a ball player, a cop.

He just looked at me and grinned. Then he'd bow his head back into his book and say: "You said it, Jack."

I asked him what he was reading and he said it was about Rosa Parks and the march on Montgomery, Dr. King's 'I have a dream speech.' He looked at me out of the corners of his eyes.

"If I was sitting at that lunch counter," he asked me, "Would you have sat with me?"

"Sure," I said.

When we got older we started playing ball at the court in the park downtown, and we had our first run ins with the bigger world. Andre was the only black kid and the other kids didn't want to let him play.

"This is our court," the tallest kid pronounced, holding the ball between his arm and his hip.

I looked at Andre. He looked like he was itching to play, to show that kid something, but he didn't dare. He looked like he didn't know what to say.

"He's really good," I said to that big kid.

"You his friend, or something?" the kid shot back, with a hint of a threat in his voice.

"I've seen him play," I said.

"What are you, Dr. J, or something?" the big kid said to Andre. The other kids laughed.

Andre looked at the big kid. Then he looked at me.

"Just let him show you what he can do," I said to the big kid.

The big kid threw the ball at Andre. "OK," he said, "Everyone knows these shines can play basketball."

In high school, Andre was good enough to make the varsity team. We spent less and less time together. He had practice. My mother wanted me to get into a good business school, and I spent more time in the library studying. I went to a couple of games though, when I had the chance, and when they won and he had scored a few points, I went down to the court and hung around, trying to talk to him. He'd be goofing around with the other kids on the team and I'd wait for a chance to get a word in.

"Nice shot," I would tell him. "That shot in the third quarter."

The other black kids on the team gave me a look like I had come from Peyton Place and wandered into the wrong side of town. When they saw Andre wave to me on the downlow like, they looked at him as if to say: 'you know this punk?'

"Thanks, Jack. You caught that shot?"

"Of course."

He'd nod. "Cool." Then he turned back to the guys on the team. They'd talk to each other in their slang, with their backs to me, and Andre would laugh at their cracks until I got tired of standing there, until I felt my face turning red.

He got accepted to St. John's, on a scholarship, and I got into Hofstra. The Smiths still lived at the end of the block, but the ball games were over. Mr. Smith busied himself in his yard instead of coming over to talk to my dad. Mrs. Smith quit the supermarket and got an office job. We'd drive passed them sometimes and wave. Then we stopped waving. Then came the thing with Eric Garner.

Eric Garner was the guy who died in the choke hold of a police officer when he refused to cooperate in an incident to which they were called. He was selling bootleg cigarettes out in front of some stores, and the stores called the police on him. He argued with the cops, they called for backup, and the officer who answered the call put him in a choke hold, and he ended up dying.

The city erupted. It was on the national news. People marched through the streets, stopping traffic, calling for the cops to be arrested and tried for murder. They took their banners to city hall, in front of police stations, in front of my dad's police station. Some police cars got smashed up. Some cops got attacked. I remember listening to my mother telling my dad one morning, before he left for work: "Be careful out there, George. Don't get drawn into anything."

"I'm always careful," I heard him reply, putting his arm around her. "You know that."

She leaned into him and looked him in the eyes. Her face was white. "Things are different now."

"Well, I've got a job to do, Louise. I've got to do my job. We've all got to keep doing our jobs. Otherwise..."

She cut him short. "Sometimes I wish it were a job someone else would do," she said. "Let someone else do that job."

He looked right back into her eyes. "Louise, we can't just wait for someone else to do this job. You know that."

She closed her eyes and leaned her head on his chest, grabbing him tighter, like she didn't want to let him go. "Just be careful," she said, one last time.

When he came home from work, I started to see the lines in his face, how hard his face was starting to look, how he clenched his teeth all the time. How his hair seemed grayer. I could see it. He would sit in his chair watching the news, the Black Lives Matter people talking about profiling and racist cops, and he would be leaning towards the screen, not saying anything. Just staring at the screen with his hands clenched. I thought I saw someone who looked like Andre in that crowd, talking about defunding the police. Getting rid of the police. Getting rid of my dad. After 9/11 the cops were heroes. Now it all seemed like ages ago. Like it happened in another world.

"You OK, dad?" I asked him.

He turned to me and flashed me a little smile. "Yeah, sure," he said.

"What do you think of all this?"

"Well, I'm not a racist cop, if that's what you mean."

"I know that," I told him. "I remember you used to talk to Mr. Smith all the time. You took us to that ballgame."

He took a deep breath. He didn't say anything.

"What do you think is going to happen?"

He leaned back in his chair and shrugged. "It's a political thing. It's all about money and power."

"Is it getting harder out there?" I asked him.

"It's always getting harder, son."

"Do those people ever say anything to you?"

He didn't answer right away. Then he said: "You can't take it personal. You can't take things personal, on this job."

"But what's going to happen to the force?"

He moved in his chair. "We've got to have police, son. Someone's got to keep law and order. Somebody's got to do it. Otherwise it will be like that time when the lights went out. When they broke into all those stores and set all those fires."

I thought of Andre out there, maybe, protesting, and my dad, getting things thrown at him. I felt my heart beating faster. "Why can't people just get along?" I asked him.

He sighed. "Because there's bad people out there. There's good and bad in every race. I've arrested black people, white people, Chinese people, young, old... that's the way it is. But we have to do this job for the decent, law abiding citizens of the world. Whoever they are."

I wanted to talk to Andre. One time I saw Andre drive by and I waved to him. He did not wave back, like he used to. That bothered me. So I went over to his house and rang the bell. He didn't answer right away. So I rang the bell again.

When the door finally opened, he stood in the doorway, his arms folded, frowning. He did not step out next to me, or ask me in.

"What is it?" he snapped. "What do you want?"

He was now much taller than I was and he was looking down at me. His afro was gone, changed into dreadlocks.

"Just wanted to talk," I said.

"About what?" he said, "About what happened in the city?"

Somehow I couldn't look him in the eyes. There was a scary anger in them. "It's a tough time for everybody," I said, looking at his sneakers.

"You people are worried about this, aren't you?" he said.

"I'm worried about my dad."

"Another cop kills a black man, and you think we can just go on as if nothing happened?" he blurted out. "You want me to feel sorry for your dad?"

"You know my dad isn't a racist," I said, looking suddenly up at him, my heart beating faster again. "You know that, Andre."

Andre looked away and shook his head. He seemed to be struggling with something. For a minute he looked like he used to look when we played basketball one on one in the driveway at my house; but then his hands tightened into fists and he twitched into the present. "Look," he said, "Cops that look the other way when these things happen are a part of the problem. So are people who don't speak up. Silence is violence. White silence is violence."

"My dad's a good cop," I told him. "He's just trying to do his job. It's not an easy job. But someone's got to do it. You know that. I just wish we could all respect each other a little more."

"You know what," he shot back, wincing, "You don't know what it's like to be black in this country. To ask permission to go to a ball game, or just play ball on the town court. Hell, to walk down the street. You don't know what it's like to be followed around in stores because they think you're going to steal something, or to be followed around by cops on the street because they think you're going to cause trouble."

I stood there trembling for a moment, listening to him. "Did my dad ever do that to you?" I asked him.

"It's happend to me, bro. You know that? If it wasn't your dad, it was some other cop, so what does that matter? It shouldn't happen. Does it happen to you? We're tired of all this. We're tired of it, man. Tired of being treated like second class citizens."

"I never thought of you as a second class citizen," I said.

"You don't even realize it. You play ball with us just so you can tell yourself you're not a racist. You invited me to ballgames so you can say to yourself that you're doing something for us. You know something? You know how hard it was for my dad to get this house? You know about the phone calls we got, telling us we weren't wanted on this block? You tell yourself you're not a part of it. But you are a part of it, bro. You are."

"Andre," I said, looking up at him, "I never knew you felt like that. You sound like you're repeating something someone else told you."

"Yeah, somebody opened my eyes. So what? You wouldn't understand. You know what? You're never going to understand. Because you and your family aren't one of us. You want to be one of us? Come down to the police station and march with us."

I just looked back up at him. I couldn't say anything.

"Yeah, that's what I thought," he said.

"What do you want me to do? Turn my back on my dad? You know how hard it is for him right now, to hear people he' sworn to protect and serve telling him he's no good? And what did he ever do?"

"Hard for him? What about the mother of Eric Garner?"

"It's a tragedy for everybody."

He shook his head. "So that's it? That's what you came here to say?"

"I don't know. I was hoping for something better than this."

"Well, that's the way it is."

"I'm sorry, Andre, I guess."

"You can go your merry way. You don't have to tell me you're sorry."

He closed the door in my face.

As I walked back from his house the darkness seemed to descend around me and I couldn't recognize the familiar surroundings of my own neighborhood. The doors were all closed and the blinds were pulled down. Somewhere in the distance, a siren was going off.

The two little black and white kids who used to play ball together were gone.