My teachers tell me I'm average.
My family doesn't contradict that. I don't think they think about it much, if at all, really. They're happy with me the way I am. I'm happy with them the way they are, so that makes us happy.
We live in a very small house. It would be a big house if one person lived in it, but we are seven: there's me, and my parents, and my grandparents.
The summers aren't bad in the house, we can spread out some, but the winters are different. Our house has no central heat. When Mum makes the cabbage soup we eat every night, the cooktop helps keep the house warm, but mostly it's the fire in the fireplace that does the work. We do have a fireplace. My Mum and I collect the firewood for it. That's one of my chores. My Dad works all day. My grandparents are too old to work, or to do chores.
My Mum and I don't have to go far to get the wood. Our house is at the bottom of a hill, on the edge of town, and people leave all sorts of things on the edge of town for us to find, almost everyday, in the open space right outside our drift fence, like the tide bringing things to a beach. A drift fence is a fence made out of thin, splintery wood slats and wire. It's not very sturdy, but it marks our property line so people don't throw things onto our doorstep. We found it when we were looking for firewood. We get enough snow here to want a drift fence.
Unlike the fence, most of the things folks drop off are things they don't want and we can't use: rusted out cars; old tires; sofas with rotting fabric and bad springs; stuff like that. But a lot of the things are made of wood, and we break them down and use them. The other day we struck gold! We found a whole stack of pallets someone had dumped!
We're burning that wood right now, but I wish the fire were warmer.
I'm sitting on the creaky old bed my grandparents share, and the down quilt I'm sitting on is snug and warm against my legs. The bed is right up against the fireplace, but not too close to it. With all the blankets on it, that would be dangerous. I'm facing away from the fireplace, because my Grandpa Joe is telling a story, but I can hear the crackle, and smell the wonderful aroma of the burning wood. Still, the fire's warmth barely reaches my back, and it makes me sad we can't be warmer. We could use more of the wood to make it hotter, but then the wood wouldn't last the night.
Life is a balancing act.
The weak fire means it's too cold for my grandparents to get out from under the down quilt that I'm sitting on, and all the other blankets that we have heaped on the bed. They'd freeze in a minute. It's not just the blankets: it's too cold for them to get out of their clothes. They're bundled up like thrice-wrapped Christmas presents: in nightshirts, and shirt shirts, and thermal underwear, and caps and scarves, and my grandmothers crochet in fingerless gloves to make more things to put on, but I don't know how they do it, as cold as their bare fingers must be. Maybe moving their fingers like that keeps them warm.
It's so cold, my grandparents eat in bed, and we eat with them. My Dad helps my Mum put a chair between the bed and the fireplace, so we can use the bed as a table. The chair just fits. She sits there, and Dad sits on the bench at the dining table, which, if you face the other way, is at the other side of the bed. The bench is that close! It's not a big house.
Where I sit moves around; sometimes here; sometimes there, but always, when dinner is finished, and the evening is growing old, like everyone already is in my house, except me, of course, we tell stories.
What I mean is, my Grandpa Joe tells stories, and they're always the same stories: they're always stories about Willy Wonka. "I used to work for him, you know," he says. I do know, but what I don't know is why we pretend, night after night, all winter long, in the long shadow of Willy Wonka's factory, a hulk at the top of our hill, sitting like a dead weight on our town's beating heart, that I haven't heard these stories a million times before.
I could tell them to them, myself, word-for-word.
I've asked my Mum about it. She says not to mind. She says it's a sign of trauma. She says the traumatized person tells the story of the trauma over and over, and that helps the trauma go away.
That might be right, but if it is right, why is Grandpa Joe still telling them? Those stories happened before I was born. Shouldn't he have told them enough by now? Grandpa George stopped talking about how the clock-making factory he worked for cheated all their workers out of their pensions by declaring bankruptcy, and then, when the pensions were gone, started up in business again. He, and everyone else working at that factory, gave all of their working lives to that factory, only to have its owners betray them, and leave them with nothing to retire on, while the owners stayed rich.
Did Willy Wonka do that to Grandpa Joe?
My Mum gave me a hug when I asked her that, and laughed, and said no, Willy Wonka had given all his workers three months wages when he closed his factory, to tide them over while they found other jobs, and besides, Mr. Wonka had paid so well, that Grandpa Joe had lots of savings from working there, and maybe that's why Grandpa Joe was telling the stories again: he couldn't get over his savings finally running out. That was a year ago, but between those savings, and Dad's job at the toothpaste factory, our little family had been doing rather well, she said, and with a comforting pat she tousled my hair as she let me go.
I could only stand and force a smile. I've learned there are questions you don't ask in our family. You want to, but you don't. We aren't doing very well now, are we, Mum? We're doing badly now … Aren't we? That's two of them.
Those aren't the only questions I don't ask. I have a bunch more: Don't people have heat in their homes? Lots of heat? Isn't a roof supposed to come without holes in it? Do grandparents everywhere share one bed? In other people's houses, is dinner always cabbage soup? Do other families scavenge for wood in a dump? Is it usual to grow out of your clothes, and not replace them until you can't fit into them at all any more? Is it usual, while the other kids play at recess, to be so tired that you sit at your desk instead? Are these things usual? Are they average? I don't ask any of those questions out loud. I don't need to. I look around at the other kids at school, and I know the answers. If I ask my family, my family will answer me, honestly, and I don't want the confirmation.
No.
I don't.
It's easier to pretend that this is the life of the usual, average family, doing the usual, average things, the usual, average way, and the stories Grandpa Joe tells about Willy Wonka are the icing on the cake. I know why Grandpa Joe tells these stories over and over: it isn't because of trauma. It's because for him, it's Paradise remembered. You can see it on his face. And I know why I listen to every one of those stories, over and over, as if I'd never heard them before: it's because there is nothing usual, or average, about Willy Wonka. And I know, whatever my teachers may tell me, there is nothing usual, or average, even, about me.
I'm Charlie Bucket, the one and only, and I'm as tough as hard-luck can make a person.
Are these my characters? They are not.
Is this purely for entertainment? It is.
Shall I relish your reviews? I won't know that until I see them. Thanks for reading. As it ever is in my stories, direct quotes from the 2005 movie are in italics.