The Bricklayer

Source: Pixabay

It was love at first sight, for me, my mother and my sister.

We bumped into each other, jostling for places by the window to watch him work. Before he came to work on the outbuilding for our poultry farm, the male species never had any fascination for me.

Now, I finally feel an overwhelming attraction to the opposite sex; I have to fight my more beautiful mother and sister for his affections.

My sister shoved me off the window to take her turn. I leaned up on tiptoes over her taller frame to cast one last, lingering hungry look at the most perfect and inappropriate specimen of manhood I had ever seen.

You see, while he had the caramel colored skin, over six feet height and smoldering eyes, he was just an ordinary bricklayer. You know the one. Those uneducated, ‘coarsely sexy,’ poor types.

There was nothing sexy about poverty.

“So because of the bricklayer, you girls now fight over the window?” My father asked.

“Those who already have a boyfriend shouldn’t watch,” I said, a pointed barb at my elder sister, Victoria.

“Jesus, does he shine those muscles?” Victoria asked in a slurred, dreamy voice.

My father burst into laughter. When my mother appeared with a glass of iced tea and the last piece of cake, he rubbed his stomach in eager anticipation. Dad had a sweet tooth. Before the bricklayer started work three days ago, Mom did an excellent job of satisfying his cravings for sweet things.

He was about to be disappointed.

Mom sashayed past him and headed for the door. He recovered quickly and rushed after her.
“Where do you think you’re going with my cake?” he asked.

“The bricklayer is here.” Mom stepped down the porch headed towards the bricklayer with purpose.

My father stared after her with his mouth open. “Your mother too?”

He stomped into the house in quick, angry strides. I moved outside to the porch to get a better view.

“Thank you,” I heard the bricklayer say, “you’re nice, and you’ve got a great family too.”

Mom laughed and threw her head back, causing her long blonde hair to fall down her back in a gorgeous stream. I clenched my fists as darts of envy shot through me.

A loud sigh from Victoria reached my ears. “He even has manners.”

The front door fell open with force. My father mumbled angry words under his breath as he ran down the porch to get his wife back. I couldn’t hear a thing, but the words ‘cake’ and ‘behaviour’ reached my ears.

Victoria followed. “What does Dad want to do? He better not fire him.”

“That will be the best idea he’s had all week.” I was going to lose him to either my sister or mother anyway.

We watched Dad discuss with the bricklayer, hand some money to him and grab Mom by the hand and marched her inside.

Victoria twisted her fingers in painful looking knots and ran after our parents. “Did you fire him?”

Dad sighed. “No. I just gave him money to buy the materials he needs once and for all so he can finish the damn work and stop coming by!”

The tight feeling in my chest eased.

Victoria breathed a sigh of relief. “Thank God.”

She was always the dumber of the two of us.

She frowned. “Why give him money for all the materials?”

Dad gave a grim nod. “To get him out of your hair.”

Victoria gasped in outrage. “But I want him there.”

See? Always slow on the uptake.

For the next two weeks, we waited by the window and took a thousand glances at the gate. We jerked at every knock on the front door. But the bricklayer never returned.

We remained hopeful.

By the third week, we knew. The bricklayer had run away with Dad's money.
“Women,” Dad spat the word in disgust, “you saw a sweaty chest and heard a couple of nice words and fell for a thief.”

Victoria sighed. "God, was he goodlooking."

I rest my case.

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