Me and Andre

Andre was my best friend in the summer of 1982. I met him at the YMCA summer camp held at White Plains High School in Westchester County, New York when I was 13 years old. He was black and I was white. We became fast friends. We rode together on the bus every day and we shared our lunch and we played dodgeball and sometimes we stood up to the bullies together. We didn't always win, and sometimes we left bloody, but we always stood together.

If you fought Andre, you were definitely gonna fight me too, and vice versa. He was skinny and lanky but he was tough. He could throw a punch, and he could take one too. He was quick. (He had three older brothers and a father who drank heavily and got angry. They weren't very well off.) I knew how to throw a pretty hard overhand right and a sneaky left uppercut. At any given time at least one of us usually had a black eye, bruised knuckles and scabs on our forearms and knees. We didn't back down much. It mostly depended on the numbers, but kids just kinda stopped fucking with us after a while. There were easier targets out there. (And even if you had the numbers today, we might catch you alone tomorrow or the next day. Payback time. Word gets around.)

I didn't live in White Plains, but when school let out for summer down in the Bronx, I spent most of my time up there in suburban Westchester at my grandparent's house. My father was just some scumbag who left before I turned two years old and I never knew him. My mother worked at IBM full time, so when school was out it was just more practical for me to be there, I guess. I liked it up there. There were trees. I had a BMX bike and a skateboard.

My grandparents lived in a "mixed neighborhood" - that was what they called it then - a short walking distance from the housing projects. Today they might say "diverse", I guess. Back then, I didn't know the difference and I didn't care. I went to school with kids who were Black and Puerto Rican and Dominican and Italian and Jewish and Armenian and a dozen other things. It just didn't even occur to me that any of it mattered. I was in the minority anyway. There weren't a whole lot of Catholic white kids, but it didn't matter. We were all just kids.

Anyway, the day I truly learned about racism (I had heard some stupid jokes, of course) was the day that I invited my friend Andre back to my grandparent's house after we got off the bus coming back from YMCA summer camp. I remember it was like 95 degrees that day. He only lived about five blocks away, but it was on the other side of Soundview Avenue, and when I grew older I learned that was the dividing line. The line between black and white in that neighborhood. I didn't know there was one. We didn't have one down where I lived. We all just kinda lived together.

Everything was cool at first when we got to the house. Me and Andre had some iced tea and my grandmother gave us some popsicles. She was fine with him and really nice to him actually but when my grandfather's car pulled into the driveway she suddenly had a worried look on her face and told us to go play out in the backyard.

I remember me and Andre were wrestling and laughing out there, him in his old hand-me-down New York Knicks jersey, when my grandfather walked up and just stood there on the lawn with his hands on his hips, staring at us silently. Eventually we stopped grappling.

"Tommy, who's your new friend here?" He looked unhappy. I didn't know why.

"Oh, this is Andre. He lives right up the street, right by the church. We go to camp together." I was sweating. Andre was basically kicking my ass. He was tough for such a skinny kid. Really scrappy.

"Tommy, I need to talk to you inside. Your friend can wait here." He never even looked at him. I followed him into the house.

My grandmother quickly found a reason to be somewhere else and there in the kitchen I received an odd lecture about who I was and was not supposed to be friends with. Andre was definitely out. My Jewish friend Scott from just down the block was also out. The white kids who I went to church with on Sunday mornings were okay. (Except for that kid Kenny who was rejected from being an altar boy for some unknown cause. That kid was a problem case and not to be associated with.)

"Grandpa, I don't understand. There aint no difference. There just aint no difference between him and me. I don't understand?"

My grandfather pointed at the back door and told me I had to tell Andre to leave now. I told him we wanted to watch the Knicks game together. He said no.

I left through the back door and then me and Andre went back to his house and watched the Knicks game there. His brothers picked on me a little bit and his father was silent and brooding the whole time, sitting in his reclining chair drinking one can of beer after another, but I didn't really care. I always liked Andre's dog, a brindle pit bull named Bruce. He was playful and tough and I liked to fight with him. Plus, we got pizza from Magnotta's just down the street. Best pizzeria in the neighborhood, and the Knicks won by 14!

I am old enough now to know that my grandfather was wrong.

Andre went to law school and later became the District Attorney in the city where he lives in Westchester County, and after that he started his own law firm. He has a beautiful family with two daughters who graduated from prestigious universities and a son who served two tours of duty in Iraq with the US Marine Corps and earned a Purple Heart.

We live three thousand miles away from one another now, but we still talk by phone about once every week or two. We still have a lot in common. I'm a bit more outlaw and he's a bit more sheriff but we're both still close friends (and we're definitely both still fans of the NY Knicks). Our bond is unbreakable. I know that someday I will be crying at his funeral, or he will be at mine. Time will tell.

My grandfather was wrong. There aint no difference.

There just aint no difference.

THE END