ddie Kaplin sat at the kitchen table eating a scrambled egg and toast.  His mother checked his math homework and signed it after calculating each problem to make sure his answers were correct.

She wore a loose-fitting flannel robe and slippers, and sat across from him at their new Formica and chrome kitchen table covered with a green and blue plastic tablecloth.  Eddie smelled coffee percolating on the stove in a little metal pot with a glass window on the top.  Most mornings, his father sat with them at the table and ate breakfast while reading the newspaper.  This morning, he had an appointment in Valley Stream on Long Island.  Eddie knew that meant his father would take the car instead of the subway.  He liked thinking of his dad driving to work in the yellow and black 1951 Buick Special they had recently bought.  Less than four years old, it was practically brand new.

His father dressed in a suit that morning, the dark one he wore to weddings and funerals.  "You look sharp as a tack," his mother said.  They kissed, and Eddie turned his head.

His father talked about a big account.  If he got it, they could afford to buy a house on Long Island, which they referred to as "the island."  Eddie had visited his Aunt Rose and Uncle Lenny who lived in Levittown, and it didn't seem like an island to him.  No one even owned boats.  It just seemed like a bunch of lots with little houses that looked like the houses in a Monopoly game.  He didn't want to leave his friends, so he secretly hoped his father wouldn't get the account.

"Wish your father luck," his mother said.

Eddie ignored her, taking a forkful of egg into his mouth.

"I don't need luck," said his father.

Eddie didn't look up from his egg, but the tone in his father's voice was the same he used when he bragged about the size of the fish he had caught off Montauk Point with his friend Mike.

"I know just how to sell these boys, believe you me.  I'll have them eating out of the palm of my hand."

When it was time to go to school, Eddie imagined his father coming home all excited about the deal and them moving soon after that.

"That's crazy," Arnie Stein told him.  "But even if you move, you can still come back here and visit, can't you?"

"Sure, but it won't be the same.  You have to drive in a car to get back to Brooklyn from Long Island.  It's a big deal."

Eddie considered what really bothered him.  "They probably don't play stickball out there.  Or punchball.  They don't even have stoops to play stoopball.  When I visit my cousins, all we do is climb trees and run after their stupid dog."

Eddie spent the day moping and whining about everything.  He even got in trouble with Miss Howser for not paying attention when she was talking about civil rights and Emmett Till being killed in Mississippi.  All Eddie knew was that Mississippi wasn't in New York, and they probably didn't play stickball there, either.

After school, his mother was waiting for him with a bologna sandwich and potato chips.  As a special treat, she let him drink a Dr. Brown cream soda straight from the bottle.  Instead of setting up a TV tray and allowing him to watch Tic Tac Dough for half an hour before starting his homework, she set his plate on the kitchen table and sat down next to him.

"Your father called while you were in school.  From Long Island.  It was long distance, but he didn't care."  She was so happy, Eddie almost felt happy himself.  But he didn't let his mother see it.  "He got the account!"

"Does this mean we're moving?"

"I hope so, don't you?  We'll own our own house with a backyard."

"I don't want a backyard," Eddie said.  "I like it here.  This is where my friends are."

"But you'll make new friends."  Her voice lowered and her eyes narrowed.  Eddie was totally unprepared for what would follow.  "We have to move out of Brooklyn, Eddie.  The neighborhood is changing."

Even at ten, Eddie knew what that meant.  He had heard the adults talking.  It meant Negroes were moving in.

"So?" he asked.

"So?  They're not like us.  They're different.  It'll be dangerous for you in school."  She leaned in as if sharing a secret.  "White people are moving to Long Island.  That's why we have to move."

He had never heard his mother refer to herself as white before.  They were Jewish, his parents' friends, Camille and Anthony Marano, were Italian.  White people had blond hair and blue eyes.  The Germans he heard horrible stories about were white.  It seemed wrong to think of himself as white.

Eddie had seen images on television of whites beating Negroes, setting vicious dogs to attack "colored" children.  They talked about it in school, but that happened in far away places, "down South."  Now he saw his mother as a racist, a word Miss Howser had taught them.

He knew colored kids were in his school, but he never thought much about them.  Maybelle Johnson, who was in his English class, won the school's spelling bee and Benny Washington could make fart sounds with his underarms better than anybody.  Sure, some Negro kids got in trouble for fighting, but just the other day Andy Leary was suspended for setting a fire in the boy's room.  No one was calling the Irish kids dangerous.

Eddie tried explaining this to his mother, but his words got all twisted.  She finally said, "You'll understand when you're older."

He knew what that meant:  end of conversation.

He waited for his father to come home.  He'd tell him he was sorry he didn't wish him luck in the morning, but he was happy he made the deal.  He'd also tell him they didn't have to move to Long Island.  His father would understand.

But his father didn't understand.  Worse, when Eddie tried explaining how the Negroes in his school weren't dangerous, his father used the "n" word.  He had never heard that word in his house before.  His mother and father never cursed in front of him, and he knew that was a curse word.

"You don't understand what it's like out there."  His father spoke quickly, as if to erase what he had said.  "They're all over now.  I have to deal with them everyday on the trains and in the street.  Even at work.  They hired a colored man to cover the East New York territory.  Soon they'll be after my job."

"But you're the best salesmen there is.  Why are you worried?"

His father stared at him.  Eddie watched his father push out his bottom lip with his tongue, a sign that he was thinking about what to say.  "It's not that, it's how they act.  They're just not like us, son.  You'll understand someday."

The next day at school Eddie tried to understand.

He watched Billy Williams, whose black skin glistened in the florescent lights of the school.  In fact, he watched him so closely Miss Howser thought he was cheating during the spelling test.

"Keep your eyes on your own work, Eddie," she said aloud.  "You don't know if Billy spells any better than you do."

The class laughed, including Billy.

Still, he watched Billy all day.  He saw how he yawned just before lunch and how he walked like he was afraid when Miss Howser called him up to the board to do a math problem.  He held the chalk a funny way, Eddie noticed, more in his fist than with his fingers, but he knew that wasn't what his mother and father meant when they said Negroes were different.

In the playground, the Negro boys laughed with each other in loud voices, often saying things Eddie didn't understand.  But the Italian kids did the same thing.

The Irish kids sometimes made fun of the Jewish kids, calling them names, and the Italians made fun of the Irish, but Eddie knew that most of the time they were just joking.  He and his friends didn't really mean anything by the name-calling.

But somehow it was different when someone made fun of the Negro kids, Eddie thought.  Considering what he saw on television and heard in class, he didn't feel right calling them names.  He wasn't sure why, but it just seemed wrong.

At home, his mother asked him questions about how many "coloreds" were in his class and if they ever stole anything from him or threatened him.  "Stay away from them," she warned him.

Meanwhile, they spend most Saturdays on Long Island riding around in a car driven by a lady who took them to different houses.  Eddie never knew ladies could drive.  Neither his mother nor his mother's friends drove.  His father had only learned a few years earlier.

They finally settled on a house in East Meadow, near where Aunt Rose and Uncle Lenny lived.  The house had three bedrooms, one would be a guest room, his parents told him, so he could invite his friends from Brooklyn to spend the night.  There was even a basement covered in what his father called knotty pine, where they would watch television and listen to records.

And there was a backyard with a big tree that Eddie climbed.  They even bought a dog.  It was his job to take it for a walk every morning before school and every afternoon when he came home.

"Colored people aren't allowed to live here," his new best friend and next-door neighbor, Barry Goldman, told him one day.  "If they try, the real estate people tell them the house costs a lot more than it really does.  And the banks don't let them get loans."  Barry thought it was a good thing.  Eddie wasn't sure.

It didn't sound fair to him, but his father assured him it had to be that way.  "It keeps property values high," he told him.  "Besides, there are parts of Long Island that don't allow Jews.  I wouldn't want to live where I'm not wanted, would you?  It's best to stick to your own kind," his father said.  "So, you see, it's the way it's supposed to be."

Eddie still wasn't sure.  At times, he felt bad about how he lived, especially when he studied about segregation in school.  But most of his friends didn't seem to question what their parents told them, including his old Brooklyn buddy, Arnie Stein, whose family had moved to the nearby town of Bethpage.  His mother now drove, and she took him to visit Arnie most weekends.

He even found enough kids in the new neighborhood to play stickball.  Although the Dodgers had moved from Brooklyn to Los Angeles, Eddie still imitated his hero, Duke Snider, when he was at bat.  He'd sweep the stick over the plate three times before lifting it to his shoulders.  Some of his new friends even began calling him The Duke.

His father took a new job with a company on Long Island and drove to work everyday.  He seemed much happier now.  His mother played mah jong with the women and the subject of race rarely came up.

Eddie even won ten dollars in a writing contest for an essay on the topic, "Justice and the American Way," sponsored by the Veterans of Foreign Wars.

His parents were proud when he donated half of his winnings to the NAACP.