the builders

The back of our rented house
is being redone.
‘The builders are coming on Saturday
and Sunday,’ Amy said,
‘around one.’ And they arrive,
driving a burgundy station-wagon
with tools. Three of them.

I offer them tea (after all,
they are working on a weekend,
and a sunny one). They decline,
and I continue my climbing up and down
on the kitchen chair - my mission in the
spice cupboard, armed with sticky labels
and pens.

We are a good team. Me with my
emptying and filling and scratching off gum.
Them with their surgeon-like concentration,
perched on tip-toe, silent consultation of
‘pass the Phillips Head’ (unsaid) or
exchange of hammers, or drilling hum.
I make guesses when they talk. (It’s like being
in another country, the relief of no meaning, the
simple massage of sounds. Polish? Serbian? Slovene?)

The afternoon goes quickly. Intermittently
I squash fists against ears as the disc-saw
whines and splits the rotten frames (that had
gorgeous sidey-ways old metal latches) to
replace them with powder-coated, shiny-throated
aluminium sorts. ‘Much thicker panes’,
they report.

Dismantling.
Smoking.
Talking.
(They use a tool to cut the older glass
on the angle, the piece just falls out, is
carefully carried away. But I fear for fingers.)

By five – a very satisfying time:
windows in (if not the door) and the
spice cupboard now a small,
rambly forest lit by the white, horizontal stripes
of finicky labels with cursive names:
Paprika, ground cinnamon and garam marsala.
A meadow of glass greyness in the semi-dark.
I start to think dinner.

They’ll be back early.
How early can they come? ‘Eight?’ I guess.
They laugh together and request
to leave their tools and cords in a tidy pile.
Sure. Not at all in the way.

Next day, respectably late, they return.
The tea offer recurs, but conveniently
they just ate. ‘Eggs and bacon... no, eggs
and sausages!’. He continues to explain,
so fast I miss most, except: ‘…smoke like a
chimney, but no alcohol...’ I nod and we
return to our work. Today just
laundry and dishes for me. For them
the door. A real job
requiring three.

Enormous.
Pre-fabricated.
Glass and sliding mechanism.
With Olympic-style safety stickers
that we will have to unpeel, and
simply risk injury.

Through a missing window, like
hopping a fence, I straddle the metal frame.
In and out, so as not to prevent their
work and to put out washing in leaky sun.
‘What language are you speaking?’ I ask one,
suspecting, at last guess, Russian from some
of the syruped, domed syllables tongued.
‘Macedonian’, they volunteer more
swiftly than I’d been ready for. ‘Macedonian!’
And I can only say, ‘aahh.’

Two are brothers, and the other
married the cousin. ‘Joined their family,’ I say.
‘No, they joined me!’, he skites, dark brows
soaring high above eyeballs drawn-wide,
ashy cigarette supervising everything.
(I hate the smell, but say nothing.
It is Sunday after all. They
are working. I am doing laundry
and eating left-overs near the heater.)

We are a very traditional team. Me,
busy in the kitchen and happily.
Them, the men, destructing, constructing,
labouring with things. ‘Do you want the blinds?’
Not sure, but I must have shrugged a ‘no’.
‘The lady says get rid of the blinds.’ I feel
indecisive, but the old gold and
greenish, greasy, dusty bolts start
disappearing through the window-door,
passed, then piled on the new scrap heap.

The side door is finished now. Complete
(except for sunshine gaps in the seams
and some wavy edges), clean
factory perfect on pristine skates, with
a mesh security-arrangement which slides
a thick, foggy face across the southern view.
(I will have to arrange the pots in a new way
so their green is visible from the eating table.)

And they take away the tools (which had
a slumber party on our verandah last night
- cords, drills, drivers, glass-knife...) They
sweep, despite a tradies’ reputation for
leaving mess behind. They leave
clear space, and smeary windows
(but whiter, brighter, quite luminous, in fact)
overlooking debris piles on the
garden ivy and concrete out the back.