I took a bus from the subway station, and as it moved closer to my neighborhood it was evident that very little had changed. The houses were all Xerox copies of double-decker brick pentagons with attics as poop decks topping everything off. Trees and telephone poles were lined up on both sides of the street as in a showdown, and hedges and shrubbery were barbered into stiff bystanders. The most significant change had been the discreet way whites broke camp as the tide brought in waves of black, yellow, brown, and beige people. I must have been about ten when it started. One night I took out the garbage and saw a moving van in front of a friend’s house. On my way to school the next morning I realized that Angelo was gone. Whether we shared an ice-cream cone, argued over the rules of a game, or tried to beat the shit out of each other, everything between us was always personal. What bothered me, even then, about his leaving was that our friendship had been taken out of our hands. If we weren’t going to see each other anymore, I couldn’t see how anyone else could make that decision for us.

And then one day the color scheme of the neighborhood had only one streak of white left: the Cassioni family.

“Daddy, why didn’t the Cassionis move like everybody else?” I asked.

“I guess cause they didn’t want to.”

“Did the other white people move cause we colored?”

“It looks that way.”

“Then why don’t the Cassionis move, too, then?”

“I guess our bein here don’t matter to them.”

“Does that mean they like us?”

“It don’t have nuthin to do with whether they like us or not. It’s just that they don’t mind havin colored people live next to them.”

“Why not?”

“It just don’t bother them, that’s all.”

This was my initiation into a world where the way people felt about each other didn’t necessarily come from personal involvement. Up to this time, my attitudes toward people were formed entirely as a result of having contact with them. The change occurred as I acquired a more sophisticated understanding of the pronouns we, us, they, and them. I learned that pronouns not only broke up the monotony of continually referring to people by name as proper nouns, but were also convenient in broadening the base of people you could talk knowledgeably about, especially if you didn’t know much about them. It was brought to my attention that black and white people had long ago found the use of we, us, they, and them invaluable in simplifying their attitudes toward one another.