Her First American

S. Nadja Zajdman

“Sweetheart, why didn’t you tell us?”

“I forgot. Was I suppose to?”

Sharon’s parents looked at each other.

“Sweetheart.” Again, her mother prodded. “Were you afraid to tell us?”

“No! Why should I be? I just didn’t think about it! What is there to tell?”

Her parents smiled.

It was Visiting Day at Camp Losers, an all girls’ camp in upstate New York. Her parents had placed her there because there was no camp of its kind on the Canadian side of the border. Delicately put, it was a camp for overweight girls. Indelicately put, it was a fatty farm.

Early on, Sharon was given the option of removing herself from the bunk and moving into a bungalow originally set aside for two head counsellors. Although Sharon was, and always would be uncomfortable with communal living, she considered this exclusion a veiled punishment. In later years she would come to view it as a form of rescue, albeit a lazy one. Camps are meant to socialize children, not isolate them. An eleven-year-old who sits under a tree by the lake reading The Complete Plays of G. Bernard Shaw is bound to stick out.

The bungalow was luxurious by bunk standards. Sharon was offered her choice of roommate. Who would she like to come live with her?

Sharon was drawn to one of the older girls. Lucille Savoie was Sharon’s polar opposite. She was a fun-loving, rule-breaking extrovert. She had a big smile, a wide nose, and a large appetite – for everything.

Sharon unwittingly caused a scandal at Camp Losers. “You can’t have Lucille! You just can’t do that!” Sharon’s American campmates hissed.

“Why not?!” The Canadian girl who said “eh” for “huh” and pronounced the last letter of the alphabet “Zed”, was baffled.

“Well, you know!”

Sharon didn’t know. There was one other girl in camp who came from Lucille’s tribe, and she was more virulent than the rest. She was ten. She was as wide as she was tall. They’d never spoken before. She waddled up to Sharon on the grounds and screamed, “You can’t do it! You just can’t do it!” Sharon was not the pushover she was perceived to be. Gentle as she was, she could be as stubborn as her mother. Sharon was beginning to catch on.

“Why not? Tell me why not?!”

To her accuser, this Canadian kid was clueless. She had to be taught The American Way. The wide dark girl thrust out her arm and slapped it.

“See! You see! Lucille is like me! She’s COLORED!”

African-Americans had yet to turn ‘black.’ The descendants of slaves were either Negroes, or they were coloured. The Canadian camper remained colour-blind, and Lucille moved into the bungalow.

Lucille Savoie came from Washington. Her mother was a school teacher, and her father was a high school principal. That summer the girl from Washington introduced the girl from Montreal to Motown music, jive talk, The Ghetto Walk, and the comedy recordings of the guy from I Spy.

Lucille had brought a record player, and just before Lights Out she’d set it up in the space on the floor between their beds. After a flashlight-wielding counsellor checked in on the black and white angels, they rose from feigned slumber. Lucille would switch on her own flashlight, set up a record, and they’d listen to Bill Cosby’s elastic voice recreating the characters of his childhood landscape. Considering the situation their parents had placed them in, it was Fat Albert, in particular, who had the girls pounding their mattresses and stifling delighted squeals of laughter into their pillows. They nicknamed themselves Fat Albert, and would hail each other in the dining hall howling “Hey hey hey! Fat Albert! Hey hey hey!”

Shy Sharon was in awe of the older girl’s confidence. She was content to tag after Lucille, and acquiesced to any suggested adventure. After swimming together they’d lie by the lake on a shared beach towel, bathing in the sun which sparkled on the water and dappled the bottle-green leaves of the maple trees. Sharon shared everything with her roommate, so it seemed natural to offer Lucille her suntan lotion, too. The coloured girl stared at the little Canadian, and burst into maniacal laughter.

“Where would I put it? On the back of my feet?!”

“Oh! Oh gee!” Sheepishly, Sharon apologized. “I’m sorry. I forgot!”

Even at eleven, Sharon wrote long, descriptive letters. In these letters she would tell her parents all about camp life and – almost – all about her roommate, Lucille. Before Visiting Day Sharon damaged her glasses, so her parents rode to the rescue from Quebec to the Catskills, with a new pair. They took the two girls out for dinner to the only decent restaurant in adjacent Ellenville. The most outstanding item on the menu was not a main dish, but “a tub of butter, and a loaf of bread.” The tub and the loaf accompanied anything one might order. What was brought to the table was a deep wooden dish cupping soft yellow butter, and a wooden cutting board holding a large serrated knife and a warm moist brick of dark wheat bread. Released from dietary prison, Lucille and Sharon drooled. On this occasion the girls maintained their discipline – with her mother The Food Cop within firing range, Sharon would have to. Also, Sharon was a Miss Goody Two-Shoes. Sharon learnt what a Miss Goody Two-Shoes was from Lucille, who first called her that when Sharon took to ironing her red hair ribbons on Lucille’s ironing board. From then on, Lucille called Sharon Miss Goody-Two-Shoes – when she wasn’t calling her Fat Albert. Lucille enjoyed the younger girl’s admiration, and returned it with affectionate teasing. The little Canadian was full of such interesting ideas, and she would express them with her hands dancing and whirling in the air. When Lucille met Mr. Mann, Sharon’s father, she noticed that his hands would fly when he talked, too.

It was when the girls returned to camp with the Manns that Sharon’s mother took her aside.

“Sweetheart. You never mentioned in your letters that Lucille is coloured. Why is that?”

“I didn’t think about it.”

“Sweetheart.” Sharon’s mother prodded again. “Were you afraid to tell us?”

“No! I just didn’t think about it! Was I suppose to?”

Sharon’s parents smiled. They had taught by example. In Sharon’s class there was a girl by the name of Shelley White – who wasn’t white. Her family had moved to Montreal from Halifax. In the schoolyard the kids would taunt her with cries of “Chocolate Fudge! Chocolate Fudge!” Sharon saw that it made Shelley uncomfortable, and it made her uncomfortable, too. When she got home, she told her mother.

“If the kids call Shelley ‘Chocolate Fudge,’ then you just call them ‘Vanilla Fudge!’ “
“Oh!” How simple. “O.K.” When Sharon went back to school, she did as her mother had told her to do. She really was Miss Goody Two-Shoes.

In the Mann household it was common knowledge that, given the opportunity Rena, Sharon’s mother, would leave her husband Avrum for Harry Bellefonte. The caramel-coloured calypso singer who performed in half-open shirts and hip-hugging black slacks – he was married to a Jewish lady and he had a daughter named Sharon too! – was a constant threat in an ever-impending divorce suit. Avrum didn’t seem unduly concerned. “Great! That would leave me free for Sophia Loren!” Rena felt fiercely protective toward people then referred to as Negroes. The first black person she’d ever seen was in pre-war Poland. He was an American musician on a pilgrimage. Chopin was born in a village several kilometres from her father’s hometown. In the 1930s, this black musician had journeyed all the way from America to visit the manor house in Zelazowa Wola. The urchins of Sochaezew gawked and followed him down the street. The black musician gave a Chopin concert at the manor house, performing for curious adults.

One of the many works of literature Rena’s father fed her was Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Armed with forged documents, deliberately allowing herself to be caught in a German dragnet in Warsaw in 1943, Rena was transported to The Third Reich as slave labour, and liberated in the American zone. It was there and then that she would see Uncle Tom’s descendants come to life. Black soldiers, as well as white, could pick up a fraulein at the drop of a nylon stocking. By 1946, young German women were wheeling mulatto babies in carriages throughout Mannheim. Some of them would display miniature American flags, which waved from the carriages. So much for the Master Race.

Avrum hadn’t any personal experience with black people, but as a Polish Jew emerging from a specific time and place, he had experienced what human beings are capable of doing to each other. His sense of justice and fair play were as deeply ingrained as his wife’s. His rival, Bellefonte, Avrum didn’t take seriously, but he was mystified by Sammy Davis Jr.’s conversion to Judaism, which he considered mishigah. “A schwartz with only one eye doesn’t have enough problems? On the top of this, he wants to be a Jew?”

On Visiting Day, which extended into a weekend, Lucille’s parents arrived on Saturday. Sharon’s parents were due on Sunday. On Saturday night the Savoies took out the girls to the same restaurant in Ellenville, the one which featured tubs of butter and loaves of bread. Lucille’s mother, Irma, was dark-skinned, slender and petite. Her father Vernon was a husky man, so light-coloured that he could’ve ‘passed’, had he wanted to. At dinner Sharon asked him, “Mr. Savoie, if you’re a Negro, how come you got a French name?” Lucille’s father sardonically smiled. His answer was considered, and careful. “Ohhh Shiiirin, there was a lot of – invasion – in my family.” Sharon didn’t press the matter. She didn’t understand, for years.

In Lucille’s family, it was her mother who was the food cop, too. She was concerned with her daughter’s and her husband’s weight. She blamed the problem on her mother-in-law. Lucille and her family had spent their summers, until this one, with Grandma Savoie down in Louisiana. Lucille would describe the taste of her grandmother’s fried catfish in succulent detail. Lucille’s mother was trying to inculcate discipline and good nutrition into the family’s dietary habits. Hers was a lonely, losing battle.

Lucille was as much her daddy’s daughter as Sharon was. Once she had her protector by her side, Lucille cut loose. She slathered the hot bread with globs of butter. Both girls ordered lobster. Sharon ate hers dry. Lucille soaked tender pink morsels of lobster flesh into the buttery tub. When they were done, Lucille’s father offered Sharon more bread. “No thank you Mr. Savoie, I’m saving my calories for dessert.” Lucille’s father never forgot the response. He was enchanted by the Canadian girl.

When Sharon’s parents showed up the next afternoon, her mother strode in and greeted Lucille. “Hi! Where’s your mother?” Sharon’s parents had parked their car in front of the bungalow alongside another car with a Washington license plate. “I’m in here!” Mrs. Savoie called. Upon arrival, Lucille’s mother had undertaken a cleaning inspection. The girls had failed inspection. Lucille’s miffed mother was cleaning the bathroom. She came out to greet Sharon’s mother, rubber gloves protecting her hands. The two women looked at each other and both rolled their eyes. Sharon shrunk into a corner. Even Lucille seemed slightly shorter.

The two sets of parents clicked instantly. Like the rest of the world, the Savoies were on their way to Montreal to visit the wondrous world’s fair. They had not secured accommodations in advance. Sharon’s parents were going home in the evening, but the Savoies were staying in upstate New York for an extra day. Mrs. Savoie asked Mrs. Mann to book a hotel for them.

Sharon’s parents were partners in business as well as in life. Their warehouse-cum-office was located downtown, and they generally worked seven days a week. Upon their return to Montreal, Rena went in person to the Queen’s Hotel and booked a reservation for the Savoies with her Diners’ Club card. When Lucille’s parents arrived on Tuesday, Rena met them and accompanied them to the Queen’s. She stood behind them at the reception desk, like a soldier on guard. When the French-Canadian clerk who had accepted her reservation saw the guests she had brought in, he glared at her as though she’d played a dirty trick on him. Rena’s steely, slate-blue eyes glared black. Her daughter knew that glare. The frustrated clerk bowed his head, and honoured the booking.

After work, Rena and Avrum would have their supper at a cozy family restaurant called Dora’s. Dora would cook fresh meals every day. When the Savoies had finished their daily tour of the Expo sites, they would head up to downtown and meet the Manns at Dora’s. Avrum introduced Vernon to cheese blintzes, and Rena introduced Irma to potato latkes. In no time, they were eating off each other’s plates. After supper the two couples would cross the bridge back to the fair, and as they strolled through those magical islands at the height of mid-summer, ice cream cones in hand, the Savoies would serenade the Manns with the hit tune of the day; the wistful ballad, People. On their return to Washington, Irma sent Rena a recording of the song, which had been introduced and would always belong to a bumpy-nosed, slit-eyed Jewish girl from Brooklyn.

Lucille and Sharon bid a premature, tearful farewell when Lucille developed an ear infection, and her parents came to take her home before summer and camp were over. Sharon was left alone in the comfortable bungalow, a situation which appeared to set a pattern for all the years to come.

Sharon’s isolation was mitigated by her participation in the end-of-summer play. Camp Losers was producing an all fat-female production of My Fair Lady. The film adaptation was one of the first grown-up movies Sharon had seen. Her parents had taken her. She was learning to look at the small print that came on before the movie started, and had noticed that the film had grown out of a musical which had grown out of a play by one G. Bernard Shaw. Sharon had understood that all those funny, wonderful characters had come from the imagination of this one man, and she wanted to know who he was. In a bookshop she discovered two very heavy volumes in blood red bindings with the Irish writer’s name on it. One of the books was titled Collected Prefaces, and the other Collected Plays. Sharon had saved up just enough money from her allowance to buy one of the books. She chose the collected plays because she didn’t know what “prefaces” meant.

Holding onto her daddy, Sharon danced out of the movie theatre conversing with a crisp, upper-crust English accent. Avrum was amused and admiring. Shepsaleh, you spik de Qvin’s Yinglish better dan da qvin!” Encouraged, Sharon then mimicked Audrey Hepburn’s Cockney drawl. Her “aaaoooows” and “gaaarns” were pitch perfect. Sharon had the ears of a musician. Her sense of rhythm and her comic timing were spot on.

What Sharon wasn’t able to do was to sing, but then neither could Rex Harrison, and that hadn’t prevented him from creating and reprising a musical role which led from Broadway to an Oscar, so Sharon saw no reason why she couldn’t play Henry Higgins, too.

Holding auditions in the rec hall, the teenage director had other ideas. “But Sharon, you can’t play Henry Higgins. You can’t sing.”

“I know that. I’m not trying for the part of Liza Doolittle – except if you were doing Pygmalion I could.”

"Who’s ‘Pygmalion?’" The director was puzzled.

“It’s where My Fair Lady comes from.”

“What?!”

“That’s where it started!” Oh, these Americans. “Look, I’m trying for the part of Henry Higgins, and Rex Harrison couldn’t sing in the movie – he just talked in time to the music. I can do that too – and I can do it with an English accent! You could at least listen to me!” Sharon’s shyness was superseded by her desire for the part. She launched into an expressive rendition of Why Cawnt A Woman Be More Like a Man. She declaimed the lyrics by heart. They had the record at home, so Sharon knew the lyrics by heart to all the songs on the album. She performed it with a terrifically snooty English accent, too, yet the teenage director remained unmoved. “But I’m the only one here who can even do an English accent!” Sharon made one last attempt to persuade the director that she was born to play Shaw’s phonetics professor.

“Aww, the only reason you can do an English accent is because you’re Canadian! So what! You still can’t sing! In my show, the kids who get the singing parts have to be able to sing!” The theatre is not a democracy. Sharon conceded defeat. She shuffled off the stage.
“I can’t do an English accent because I’m Canadian,” she muttered to herself. “I can do an English accent because I can just do it!”

The director was not totally indifferent to Sharon’s talent, and proved more receptive than she seemed. She assigned the little Canadian the part of Mrs. Higgins, the professor’s mother. Mrs. Higgins is the largest part in the musical which does not include a song. Sharon would play mother to a Henry Higgins older than she was.

At first Sharon would sit in on rehearsals, even when not called upon to practice. She wanted to see how a play was put together. Witnessing this procedure proved too painful. “Naw repeat efta me: ‘Duh rain in Spain stays mainly on duh plain.’ “emoted the girl from the Bronx who got the part which Sharon knew, in her bones and in her soul, belonged to her. She threw her hands over her ears. She shook her head, the way her father did. “Oh no no no no no.” She heaved a heartfelt sigh, the way her mother did. Heavily, she exited the shade of the rec hall and wandered off into the shade of the trees. Hugging her volume of collected plays like a precious teddy bear, the pre-pubescent Shavian took herself down to the lake.

Camp Losers’ production of My Fair Lady went on with a cast of actresses in varying stages of overweight. Some, like Sharon, who had adhered to the camp diet, approached the end of summer in a visibly slimmed-down state. Older girls who had managed to smuggle in sweets from Poughkeepsie (one wit hid her stash of chocolates behind the medical scale in the infirmary), claimed metabolic imbalances.

Sharon would score a personal triumph with her portrayal of Mrs. Higgins. Her reading of the line, “Why Henry, I shouldn’t have thrown the slippers at you; I should’ve thrown the fire irons at you!” had her campmates stomping and cheering in the hall. “Boy oh boy! Shiiirin! Who knew?! What a great English accent! You told off Henry Higgins real good!”

“Thank you.”

With the residue of Shaw’s Georgian aristocrat clinging to her Sharon remained gracious, yet remote. One of the counsellors looked closely at the lonely kid. Weight loss had accentuated her high cheekbones. Shadow and liner highlighted her suddenly luminous dark eyes. In a long velvet skirt and the high lacy collar of a blouse created by the arts and crafts department, there were already outlines of the woman to come. Pensively the counsellor acknowledged, “You should’ve played a larger role.” Sharon’s dark eyes flashed, and the Mrs. Higgins in the little girl retorted ironically, “Yes. I should have.” This was the one and only time anyone in camp except Lucille had paid attention to her. Now she was the center of attention, and Lucille wasn’t there to see it.

When Sharon came home from camp, she wrote to Lucille. In response, the older girl sent her a miniature coloured snapshot of herself and autographed it, ‘Love Always, Lucille S.’ Through autumn and winter the two ex-bunkmates, like war buddies, exchanged regular letters swearing eternal friendship. Before Easter, assassination destroyed the civil rights leader carrying the name of King, but it did not destroy the movement he’d begun. In Canada, Sharon sat in front of the television with her parents watching the violent, anguished aftermath of political murder. Rena called Washington and invited Lucille to visit during the Easter school break. Lucille declined the invitation because her older brother was coming home on leave from Viet Nam. In the spring of 1968 the Savoies applied for a transfer, and when the school year ended Lucille and her parents moved to Maryland. Lucille was a teenager now. Her letters from Silver Spring became more and more infrequent. Eventually, they stopped.

The girls grew into young women. Lucille went into Education, and Sharon went into the theatre. She would realize her dream of going to England only to discover that she preferred an invigorating Canadian blizzard to a damp, wet Wednesday playing a matinee in the Waterloo Road. Over the years, particularly at times of crisis in The States, Sharon would wonder about Lucille. She was scheduled to accompany her mother to the second world gathering of Holocaust Survivors, being held in Washington, when suddenly, her father died.

Avrum had set the template for what to expect in a man. Sharon couldn’t settle for less. She didn’t. She carved out a creative life, and arrived at a kind of peace. In the last year of the last millennium Sharon ran an internet search for the Savoies of Silver Spring. She found a listing for Mrs. Savoie. Irma. Just before Easter, during spring thaw, Sharon made the call. “Shiiiirin! Of course I remember you! Lucille will be thrilled! She’s lives in Washington now. She’s a high school principal. She’s divorced. Are you married?”

“No. Never married; never divorced.”

“Then I suppose you don’t have children. Lucille doesn’t, either. Too busy with her career. The students have been her children. Oh, wait ‘til I tell her! She’s at a meeting now, but she’ll be home after eight. You can call her then. And how’s your mother! I remember her so well.”

“She’s fine.”

“Do you still have your dad?”

“No. He died in 1983.”

“I’m so sorry. I lost Vernon in ’84. Heart attack. Massive coronary. It took him in an instant.”

“That’s how my dad went.”

“You know Lucille was so attached to her dad. He had high pressure. So do I. I can barely walk. I have high pressure, I’m diabetic, and I weigh 200 pounds now.” Sharon couldn’t understand why Mrs. Savoie felt the need to tell her these things. She remembered the trim, petite teacher doing a cleaning inspection of the bungalow. Sharon couldn’t imagine the old, ill woman Mrs. Savoie said she’d become.

“Give my love to your mother. She and your dad were so good to us when we came to visit the world’s fair. What a time that was. It isn’t like that, now.”

Several hours later, Sharon called Lucille. “Shiiirin! My mother told me you’ve been looking for me! Tell me about yourself! Are you still so sweet? You were so damn sweet!”
Sharon had inherited her father’s pronounced streak of irony. “I used to be sweet. Now I’m bittersweet.”

Sharon had searched for the Savoies in Silver Spring because she assumed Lucille would be married and living under another name. Upon graduation Lucille had returned to Washington, and had launched her career there. Upon her divorce she had reverted to her maiden name. She was Lucille Savoie of Washington, again.

“What do you look like, Shiiirin? I’m trying to picture you!”

“Ohhh, I’m tall, dark and handsome.”

“I remember you with long brown hair which you wore mostly in braids. You would tie them with red ribbons. I remember you as being full of ideas, and with flying hands.” What a lovely way to be remembered.

“My hands are more subdued, now.”

Proudly, Lucille proffered, “I’ve been compared to Oprah.” She assumed Sharon would know to whom she was referring, and Sharon did. Americans assumed the world was aware of the TV talk show hostess, known by one name, who had smashed gender and racial barriers to become one of the most powerful women in America; in this case, they were right.

“I have the same struggle with weight. I’m still—overweight.”

“So am I. Sometimes. It will always be an issue.”

Reassured, Lucille invited herself to Montreal. “I can come on the Labour Day weekend, before school starts. Oh, this is so exciting!”

It appeared they were going to complete the summer interrupted thirty-two years before.

Rena would be on vacation when Lucille was scheduled to visit. Sharon decided to host Lucille in her mother’s condo. It was roomier than the apartment she lived in. They would have access to a car and to an outdoor swimming pool. She felt her guest would be more comfortable there.

Lucille’s childhood photograph was still in one of the family albums, but Sharon didn’t refer to it. Standing at the arrival gate in Dorval, Sharon was on the lookout for a woman Oprahesque. There seemed to be only white passengers emerging from the Washington flight until a large, pretty chocolate-coloured woman strode through the gate. Sharon’s heart leapt. She looked at her, and smiled. The woman brushed past her and on to the taxi stand. Sharon continued to wait.

As the crowd pouring out of the gate drained to a trickle, Sharon spied a huge black woman dragging a carry-on case. Her kinky black hair had bald spots in it. There were white blotches on the calves below her summer shift. She waddled into the hall, and her small round eyes, like chocolate drops, scanned the gathering of people meeting arriving passengers. Sharon’s heart clutched. “Lucille?” Tentatively she greeted the obese, fatigued woman. “Shiiirin?!” “Yes.” Lucille’s eyes drank in the adult image of her childhood friend with a mixture of admiration and dismay. “Shiiirin! But you’re—you’re—beautiful!” The definition of fat is elastic. At the moment, Sharon was rounder and softer than she wished to be. At forty-four, Lucille looked an unhealthy sixty.

Sharon was the first to extend her hand. “Welcome to Canada.”

Sharon brought Lucille to her mother’s home. En route to a neighbourhood sometimes sneered at as a golden ghetto, they passed a long row of ostentatious houses.

“What would a house cost here?” wondered Lucille.

“I have no idea.”

“Why don’t you know?” The visitor asked the local.

“I’ve never lived in a house.”

“Don’t you want to?”

“What for? A house is a lot of responsibility. I prefer to be free so I can go outside and play!” Sharon smiled. Her shy smile was the same as Lucille had remembered, except that her teeth were straight now.

“I live in a house. My house is big,” stated the American.

“All by yourself?”

“Yes.”

“That sounds like a lot of work.” As they rode through the underpass towards Rena’s condo the high school principal queried, “Don’t you have your own car?”

“Nope.”

“Why not?”

“Can’t afford it, and wouldn’t want to be bothered with the upkeep, even if I could.”

“No car,” marvelled the American. “Not even one.”

In Montreal, the Labour Day weekend of 1999 was shaping up to be the hottest on record. Sharon had switched on the central air-conditioning before leaving for the airport, prepared a light, cold supper, and had breakfast ready too, but they had decided in advance to go grocery shopping on Saturday so that Lucille could choose her food.

Sharon unlocked the door to her mother’s empty apartment. Lucille appeared ill at ease. “Why don’t you get undressed while I set the table. Would you like to take a shower or a bath?”

“No, but I sure would like to change.”

Sharon led her guest to her mother’s large bedroom and then went into the kitchen. In a few moments Lucille joined her, released from her bra and wearing soft slippers and a shapeless housecoat. After supper Sharon introduced Lucille to her family. They were hanging on the living room wall. Most of Rena’s walls and bureaus were lined with family photographs. Lucille noticed one picture taken close to the age when she had first known Sharon.

“That’s how I remember you!” The ice was broken.

“Funny, I barely remember myself that way.”

At breakfast Sharon sliced the yogurt-herb bread she had baked the day before. “This is absolutely delicious!” Lucille scooped up the crumbs. “I want the recipe for this!” After breakfast they went to the shopping mall located across the street from Rena’s condo. The day was going to be a scorcher.

“I didn’t think it would be so hot in Canada.”

“It never used to be,” Sharon clarified. “The weather patterns seem to be changing. Later on we can go downstairs to the pool. There’s a pleasant breeze there.”

“I can’t sit in the sun.” In explanation, Lucille raised the hem of her shift, exposing more white blotches on her trunk-like coloured legs. She had a rare skin disease. Sharon and Lucille would spend the Labour Day weekend in the air-conditioned apartment, the air-conditioned mall, and the air-conditioned car.

Sharon offered to pay for Lucille’s groceries. “If you wouldn’t allow me to stock up in advance, it’s the least I can do.” Lucille accepted her hostess’ offer. In the supermarket Lucille bought a pound of fish fillets. “I love fish.” It’s a healthy choice, thought Sharon. Perusing the signs over the supermarket aisles, Lucille gave up trying to find anything by reading them. “Why are the French signs so large, and why is the English translation in such tiny print?”

“It’s a long story.” Sharon was rueful. “It’s a story covering 200 years of Canadian history.”
Lucille got to the point. “Where do they keep the butter?” Sharon led her to the appropriate section.

“Over here.” She picked up a quarter pound stick and handed it to her friend. “No.” Lucille nodded.

“Not that one.” She leaned over and picked up a sixteen ounce brick.

“I don’t use butter,” Sharon intervened. “There’ll be too much left over after you leave.”

“Oh that’s no problem,” assured Lucille. “I’ll finish it.”

Sharon hoped she was able to hide her surprise.

Ahead of them in the aisle was a woman wearing a colour-coordinated suit and sandals, who had applied, or had had applied, matching fingernail and toe polish, was a little too loud, wore a little too much make-up and a little too much jewellery, and was blessed with thick, lustrous hair which was a little too stiff with spray.

“Most of them look like that,” Lucille scoffed. “Well, they can afford to.” She practically spat the words into the face of her Jewish friend. Sharon was stunned. She knew how her mother had secured the hotel reservation for Lucille’s parents during Expo, though the Savoies were kept blissfully ignorant. Where was such a remark coming from? Appalled, Sharon said nothing.

In the evening Sharon fixed a large salad, while Lucille fried her fish. The fillets swam in a pan half-filled with hot, bubbly butter. “Not like my grandma’s catfish,” Lucille reminisced,

“But it’ll do.”

Only when the sun went down was it comfortable enough to sit outside on the balcony, but Lucille preferred to watch TV. Rena’s set opened to the CBC.

“That’s our national station.”

Lucille didn’t bother to conceal her boredom. “Do you get American channels?” “Who doesn’t.” An obliging hostess, Sharon switched to CBS.

On Sunday Lucille saw the sights of Montreal through the windows of an air-conditioned car. Sharon brought them to her neighbourhood, a lively multi-cultural district. The former wax museum housed a vegetarian cafeteria.

“This is the neighbourhood hang-out,” a good tour guide, Sharon informed her guest.

“Here you can choose what you want, take as much or as little as you want, and stay for as long as you want.” Sharon led Lucille to the tables in the back, where a large picture window looked onto St. Joseph’s Oratory. “This is the postcard view. I can see The Oratory from my bedroom window. On a frosty winter’s night, with snow coating the dome, the effect is magical. You must’ve seen it on your descent Friday night. Whenever I’m flying in I know I’m close to home when I spot the jade-coloured dome.”

“Hadn’t noticed.”

When they left the cafeteria Lucille stopped off at the adjacent pharmacy for a chocolate bar. Sharon waited at the entrance. She heard voices raised in both official languages. Lucille had gotten into an altercation with the cashier. Sharon dashed over.

“Qu-est-ce-qu’il y a?” She addressed the cashier. “Elle ne veut pas payer!” The cashier pointed to Lucille.

“She’s trying to stiff me!” Lucille defended herself. “This bar costs fifty cents, and she wants six cents more!”

A queue was forming behind Lucille. They were locals. They watched the exchange between the American tourist and the cashier. They kept quiet.

“It’s the tax she’s asking for,” Sharon informed her guest.

“What?!”

“Tax.”

“Are you kidding?!” “There’s tax on candy bars?!”

“There’s tax on a lot of things.” Sharon’s tone was matter-of-fact.

“And you allow it? How can you let your government get away with a stunt like that?!” The high school principal was incensed.

“Well, it helps to pay for our medical care, for one.” Sharon retrieved her change purse, and placed six pennies on the counter. One of them had the image of a U.S. president carved into it. “Ici.”

“Merde!” muttered the cashier, as she scooped up the copper coins. “Maudit americain!”
Sharon quickly steered the big black woman out of earshot before the francophone cashier spewed something worse.

The next day they drove down to the Old City. It was swarming with tourists and locals enjoying, or enduring the last long weekend of summer. Cars crawled along the cobblestones. The air was oppressive. Lucille asked to make a stop at a tourist boutique. She bought T-shirts for her brother’s boys. Behind them, another visitor grumbled, “Its hotter ‘n’ hell up here. I’m going back to Florida!”

They were steps away from the St. Lawrence River. Sharon suggested, “We can take a walk along the quai. It’s cooler by the river.”

“No. I want to go back now.”

“O.K.”

Lucille had booked her return for Tuesday morning on the red-eye flight. She wanted to spend every available minute with her childhood friend before going back to work. She packed a recipe for the yogurt-herb bread along with the T-shirts, and asked Sharon to bake another loaf for her to take home. During supper, she told the younger woman that she had once been engaged to Mohammed Ali. Always accommodating, Sharon pretended to believe her.

Early the next morning, they rode in silence to the airport. Lucille left. Light dawned. Traffic thickened as the city shifted into work mode. Students were rousing themselves to begin a new school year. Sharon turned the wheel towards home. Summer was over.