Bon Appetit by Sandra Byrd Page A

you start costing the bakery money, they’d better be perfect”.
    I set the plate down. “What do you mean, free? I have my stipend, and they’re making a big investment in me at school”.
    Odette laughed. “That’s no investment. In France, each employer has to set aside one percent of his payroll for training for his employees. It must be spent each year. It doesn’t matter if it is spent on me, you, or anyone else. For a new employee, they’d have to pay the training and a salary. You are cheaper. It means nothing”.
    The door jingled open, and Odette turned to the customer. I quietly put the sables and the chouquettes in the section for afterschool snacks.
    It means nothing
. It did not mean I would have a job here when I was done, because Maman wanted Dominique back home. I may not even pass my course, which would mean I wouldn’t have a job anywhere in France. I’d be letting Luc down, of course, but it turns out I’m a rather cheap experiment, since my labor cost them almost nothing.
    My job in Seattle, of course, had been filled.
    I got up early on Sunday and put on a summer dress, but took a sweater with me. It was already cool in the mornings even though it wasn’t yet October. I picked up my newly purchased French Bible and grinned at the incongruity of bringing a French Bible to an English church.
    After the short trip to Versailles, which lay in the same district as the village and Rambouillet, I followed the map I’d drawn at home and soon pushed open the large wooden doors to the churchyard.
    I looked at my watch. I hadn’t wanted to be late, and so I was early. I walked slowly, past the climbing rose vines still in bloom, though their leaves were beginning to turn wine colored with the melancholy of autumn. When I walked in the church door, I saw a long table with pamphlets and an order of service. A lovely woman extended her hand in greeting. By the name on her tag I could see that she was the vicar’s wife.
    “Good morning,” she said, and for a moment my brain was stunned. It quickly shifted from French into English. How could I have been so surprised by my mother tongue?
    “Are you new here?” she asked.
    “Yes, I am,” I said. “I’m here studying and working. From the United States”.
    “We’re so glad to have you”. She pushed a piece of blonde hair behind her ear and continued in her lovely British lilt. “Please make yourself at home, and be sure to sign the visitor’s card so we can contact you”.
    I nodded, took my paperwork, and walked into the church. It was small and would hold perhaps one hundred people. When I’d called to inquire about service times, they told me English-speaking worshippers of all nationalities and denominations came together here. There were not many English-speaking churches in the area.
    Part of me felt foolish for coming all this way to attend an English church. Most of me was just glad to drink in my own language for a while and concentrate on God instead of verb tense or noun gender.
    I walked nearly to the front of the sanctuary and sat down. The worship band practiced on the front platform. I was thrilled that I recognized the songs, and my heart soared as I sang them, silently, inside.
    An elderly British woman doddered in and sat near me, her son behind her. He loudly honked his nose into a handkerchief every few minutes. They left plenty of “personal space” between me and them.
    Several families with kids came in and sat around the church, but not in my row. I looked straight ahead and read the various papers in the pocket of the pew ahead of me so as not to appear as uncomfortable as I felt.
    A moment later a lovely woman in a lime green suit that perfectly set off her nut brown skin sat next to me. Not by me. Next to me.
    “May I sit here?” she asked in prettily accented English. “My name is Buki”.
    “Oh, yes, please,” I said, thankful not to feel like a pariah anymore.
    The worship began. To my right, the British