Just Keep Chewing

Dab-dab-dab-dab-dab!

Dab-dab-dab-dab-dab!

Dab-dab-dab!

Dab-dab!

Dab!

Where’s the brush?  Ah!

Smoothing the make up onto my face, I occasionally wished that I hadn’t had four children and had to do this every morning anyway.  Most mums would probably not bother to make up for the school run, but I had no choice.  I was probably the only parent at the school gates with any slap on at all.

Damn!  Forgot my ears.  Could I risk it?  Probably not.  I did them.  No need for a hoodie now anyway.  I could stick to the turtleneck which meant I didn’t need to pay much attention to my throat.  My hair was probably long enough to hide the ears, but blue had a knack of sticking out even more than they did.

No need for eyeshadow though - didn’t even own it, let alone apply it.  No need really, of course.  A bit of lippy though.  Don’t want anyone to see their real colour.

I caressed my ample belly under the black shininess of the turtleneck jumper.  Another one on the way!  I often wore blue but not this morning.  Well, a pair of blue tights but everything else was black today.  Black skirt, black trainers, 

My current favourite baby was slipped into her snowsuit and boots.  She wasn’t quite able to dress herself yet and to be honest even if she was I didn’t really want to be bothered with it on a weekday.  Maybe if Tony was around, but anyway, he’d left earlier and I appreciated his need to work hard to support four kids.

Stacey got clipped into the car seat and that into the people carrier.  Adam and Grace were able to look after themselves.  Becky was not only able to do that but actually turned herself out nicely in her school uniform.  The school didn’t actually enforce a dress code at all, after all it was a primary school, but she did it anyway.  Blue blazer, blue pleated skirt, red and blue tie, white blouse, white ankle socks and so on.  Not what I would’ve worn at her age, but then it was the ‘60s and children generally wore a lot of knitwear back then.

I cast my mind back to when I was six.  Was I a better mother than my own?  I really hoped so.  I suppose she would’ve been OK if it hadn’t been for her own childhood but as it stood, my childhood had not been a happy one.  I was an only child of course, which probably explained some of it.  To be fair, she did indulge my complete fixation on blue.  It was the closest I could really get you see.  In those days violet was not a popular colour, so I stuck with blue.

The trouble with my mum was that she used me like a show animal.  It was all about the competition - win, win, win all the time.  All of my freetime was channelled into doing karate, playing soccer, which I hated, playing piano really well, and even beauty contests from a really early age.  It was a relief to go to school, where I could relax.  She wanted me to be the best academically too, and I did that, it was easy, but there was never any time when she and I could just spend a bit of mother-daughter time together.  That just never happened, and now it’s too late and I’m gone.

Anyway, I was a late developer.  There was no time for boyfriends what with my hectic schedule, didn’t even have time to think in fact, and I think my body kind of knew it was waiting for me to emerge from my mother’s shadow, because it put itself on hold.  However, by the time I did my A-levels, puberty was well underway and I had periods, boobs, whatever.  Things had got going by my eighteenth birthday.  My mum was surprisingly positive about it, in that it seemed at first to be about her being made up for me, which was great until I realised it was just because she could enter me for beauty competitions.

My mum’s intense vicarious competitiveness carried the seeds of its own destruction though.  You may not remember this, or maybe you weren’t even born, but 1971 was the famous summer of the Wonka competition.  By that time, things had got to ridiculous levels.  Her obsessiveness had her clutching at the last few months of my time at home before I got to university, and her latest fad was, would you believe, gum-chewing.  I was charged with chewing gum and bubblegum to get in the Guinness Book of Records, chewing gum for as long as possible and blowing gigantic bubbles.  Ironically in view of what happened really.  I was also living off Wonka bars at that point because of course she was buying them by the absolute truckload, desperately searching for the famous golden ticket.  Some time after blowing something like the five thousandth bubble that day, jaws aching from incessant chewing and intrusive monitoring by the Guinness judges, I opened a Wonka bar for lunch to see that telltale amber gleam.  I had won a trip to the factory.

That lack of an exclamation mark you see there shows you how weary of this whole thing I was by then.  Sure, I could go through the motions of the carefully rehearsed script we’d worked out and pretend quite effectively to be enthusiastic about my win, but deep down I knew that all of that chocolate and everything was just going to go to my mother, even if I was technically an adult now, because that was just how things went.  I had enjoyed the drama classes I’d been to, but like everything else they were a means to an end.

The first of February dawned bright and crisp.  It was absolutely freezing of course.  I picked out a blue and white checked T-shirt and some purple velvety trousers, which as it turned out were quite suitable.  On the way to the factory in the mini, ‘Knock Three Times’ was playing on the radio.  It’s funny what you remember, isn’t it?  When I got there, I felt really out of place because there were a load of kids there, much younger than me, most of whom to be frank were spoilt little brats, although it was doubtless their parents’ fault really, apart from one called Charlie who was basically OK I thought.  Really nice in fact.  

Wonka was - well, he was odd really.  It worried me a bit at first.  The younger guests were of course children so they may have missed out on the vibe, but they may have been all too aware of it.  They can be very intuitive sometimes of course, particularly with that kind of thing going on.  I can remember a particular aunt of mine I always felt uncomfortable around and then it turned out that - well, never mind.  I’ll simply say that my disquiet was well-founded.

It started to go wrong when Augustus Gloop fell in the chocolate river, but oddly, rather than that bringing the trip to a tragic end, we all just carried on as if nothing had happened.  I don’t really understand why that was, to be honest, but we did.

Then there was the tunnel.  The tunnel was scary shit!  I have spent some time since contemplating why the heck the tunnel was there and I’ve reached the conclusion that it was to traumatise us all so we were more compliant to Wonka’s wishes, as a sort of hypnotic process.  I also think it was quite Freudian.

After that we had the accidental-on-purpose room where we were supposed to nick the everlasting gobstoppers, and of course we did.  I’ve looked at them since and apparently they’re battery-powered, the battery being recharged by ambient light, and the surface then electrically stimulates the tongue to create the illusion of taste.   They do quite well with sour, salt and bitter but can’t do sweet, which is a shame because if they could it’d do wonders for tooth decay.

So the gobstoppers were easy to work out.  The same cannot be said of my own nemesis.

Willy Wonka was, I suppose, one of those people who is needed in the world, or at least gives it a bit of extra colour.  One of the things necessary to the make up of someone like him is not digging too far beneath the surface of what he sees and does.  He went very much by first impressions and didn’t generally enquire too far beyond that.  He was all about the taste, the colour, the texture, flavour, all sensual stuff, but he had a morality of sorts.  The trouble is that he wasn’t big on examining beyond that, and in particular that applied to people.  Therefore, when he heard about me, rather than asking himself why I chewed gum all day and perhaps making a connection with my mother’s pushiness, he just went “silly, rude gum-chewing girl” and, apparently, although nothing was ever proved, planned accordingly.

So we were shown the Great Gum Machine of course, which I now realise was put there for my benefit, just as many of the other devices in that place were put there for their respective victims.  If we’d thought about it, it would’ve been clear to us all that any machine able to condense a bath tub full of material down to the size of a thin strip of grey roughly an inch in length was liable to have certain effects if you then stuck said strip in your mouth.  Or maybe it’s hindsight.

The previous piece of gum went behind my ear for later, after some argument, and I started on the new one.  It was a surreal experience because it seemed to be larger on the inside.  For a starter, there seemed to be about a pint of tomato soup in it, hot would you believe, thick and creamy and running down my throat.  Wonka was of course all the time entreating me to spit it out, although his tone lacked a certain enthusiasm somehow.  There was a gradual transition to roast beef and baked potato, complete with skin and butter.  I kept chewing.  By this point, Wonka was pleading with me in quite a sincere tone of voice, but since I was a past mistress at playing all sorts of roles, while admiring the apparent authenticity of his performance, I wasn’t taken in for a single moment.  This was a two-handed piece of theatre, though he was less aware than I of the possibility that there were two actors involved.

Clearly there was something he “didn’t want to happen”.  Judging by Gloop’s fate, it would in fact be quite a risk to continue, but, well, there was an atmosphere of unreality about the whole day, probably thanks to him, so somehow I kept chewing in the expectation that something or other untoward would happen.

Sure enough, the potato transformed itself into blueberry pie and cream.  The start of the final course seemed innocuous enough, feeding itself gradually down my throat in spoonful-sized amounts.  At first, it was manageable.  I was able to swallow mouthfuls as another was delivered.  Pretty soon, I felt full, and then stuffed with blueberry pie, but I was still enjoying it.  Then my mother pointed something out.

‘Good heavens girl!  What’s happening to your nose?’

It was at that point that something snapped inside me, figuratively speaking of course.  Mum had finally gone too far somehow.  It may sound like a harmless question to you, but believe me, if you’d been stuck with her preening and primping you to her own ends for eighteen years, you’d’ve done the exact same thing.

‘Oh be quiet mother, and let me finish!’  It was just getting interesting.  At the precise moment I noticed it myself, my mum screamed those fateful words.

‘It’s turning blue!  Your nose is turning blue as a blueberry!”

It was more a sort of purple, as my father then pointed out.  There’s not really any blue food though really, is there?

Then they told me to spit it out.  I could see the purpleness moving across the visible part of my cheeks like a sponge soaking up some ink.  Then the few wisps of hair visible to me began to change too, although how that was happening I had no idea.

Spitting the gum out was not part of my plan.  I just kept chewing.  Let them think I’m stupid, I thought.  Let them think that and blame what happens now on it.  That way this not so little act of rebellion would go unpunished, at least by them.  They already think I’m stupid, no doubt, although my A-level results were about to prove them wrong.

I thought back to all those beauty competitions and being treated me like a poodle, and it occurred to me that one thing which could do a pretty good job of ruling me out of them would be to turn myself permanently indigo.  Surely a permanently indigo woman wouldn’t be judged by her appearance?  Well, maybe she would but the point is that nobody would ever focus on my beauty and such superficiality if I had taken on a hue so ironically similar to my name.  At least people would remember it now.  I mean, it’s a pretty good memory-jogger really isn’t it?

The blueberry juice was now gushing down my throat in a steady stream with nowhere to go but deep into my belly.  Glancing at my hands, I noticed that even the nails were blueberry-coloured now.  What a sight I must be!  Purple skin, nails, hair, everything.

I was full now.  I started to feel nauseous with all the blueberry juice filling up my stomach. In fact it had gone further than that.  I could feel it gurgling around inside my guts, filling them up too, distending them.  My belly began to swell.

‘Violet’ said my mother, ‘You’re swelling up!’

I certainly was, and not just my belly somehow but all over.  My skin was getting puffy everywhere except for my hands, feet and head.  I found myself fighting an almost overwhelming urge to vomit.  Not only was I most unkeen on doing that in front of everyone but also it would presumably mean spitting out the gum, and in spite of everything, I wasn’t about to do that.  It would’ve taken me months or years of dedicated overeating to get as fat as this and I knew that if they didn’t want a lividly blue model winning beauty contests, they were even less likely to let an apparently obese one even enter.

‘I feel sick,’ was my next rather unsurprising contribution to the conversation.  I also felt way beyond full of juice, and I was having to clench my buttocks together to stop a stream of liquid from leaving by that route.  Then I decided this might not be entirely wise and relaxed them, only to find that they were now so swollen with blueberry that the exit was squeezed shut and buried deep in the cleft between them.  I could feel my flesh bulging and stretching like water balloons, burgeoning out in all directions.  Yet still I just kept chewing.

‘I feel most peculiar’ I said.  I don’t think I could’ve described it at the time, so overtaken was I by the almost incredible feeling of gradually turning into a giant berry all over. I mean, how would you describe it?  There’s not a lot of common ground, is there?

‘Great heavens girl!’ contributed my mother, ‘You’re blowing up like a balloon!’

I really was.  I could feel and see my whole body inflating and stretching with the juice now, which had stopped flowing from the gum by now and seemed to have a life of its own.  I was becoming a massive purple juice-inflated balloon, my limbs splayed out by my rapidly rounding form, as I just kept chewing.  There was something weirdly appealing about all of this.  I supposed at the time that I could put it down to Wonka’s creepy charisma, but in fact later I had other ideas.  Ideas which at the time were not occurring to me because, as I’ve said already, my hectic schedule didn’t give me time for much, er, recreational activity with “special friends” or even a non-exhausted time in the privacy of my own bed for that matter.  Nevertheless, as I bloated, everything became swollen and full of juice.  Everything.  And it was bound to give me ideas.

Let’s just say I was enjoying myself in various ways.

It was of course all getting rather cramped now, and ever more difficult to move.  I was absolutely crammed full to the brim with the fluid, ripening with the irresistible force of the merciless surges of juice.  Its taste and smell were all I could experience in my mouth and nose, and the gurgling and sloshing were rapidly being replaced by slippery squeaks and a quivering expansion.

‘Prick her with a pin!’ came a cry.  No!  I thought to myself, no longer able to speak for all the turgidity of my swollen lips, tongue and throat.  Even my lungs were somehow full.  How come I wasn’t suffocating?  It was all very exciting and new to be “blown up” with this like a ripening fruit, but surely that would pop me.  Please don’t pop me!  I tried to say with plaintive eyes.  Happily the pin never came, but oh the anticipation of actually being burst like a water balloon, all that pressure suddenly being relieved in one final gush!  I didn’t want to die though.

It had been less than a minute and I was totally round now.  The juice was still coming and it had nowhere left to go but to push me outwards, bigger and bigger, and I was already gigantic.  I was just a big blue ball now, with a tiny head sticking out of the top.  My chin was brushing against the top of my chest and I looked out across myself like a landscape, a planet, curving off into the distance until the rest of me disappeared over the horizon.  Glancing to the left and right, I saw my hands, as violet as the rest of me, and found I was able to flap them.  I could also just about shift my feet, although the area between them was confusing as it brushed the floor as I did so.  I didn’t want to do it too much because that part of my anatomy really shouldn’t be dragging along the floor.

The juice was still coming.

Pretty soon I was surrounded by the little orange men.  In a surreal moment, I wondered if their colour was the result of a previous carrot gum experiment.

‘Roll Miss Beauregarde onto the boat’ Wonka told the Oompa-Loompas, ‘and take her along to the Juicing Room at once.’

Lots of tiny hands patted and pushed against me as I was tipped onto my back.  Slightly alarmingly, my sides bulged out under the weight, then the bulges shifted like tides pulled by the Moon as I was rolled onto the boat.  I was an absolutely passive participant in the process of course, since I could no longer move at all under my own power other than the occasional ineffective handflap or head twist.  I couldn’t even utter the slightest squeak.  Tiny shrill voices began to sing, and it all seemed rather rehearsed.

The Juicing Room was very simple.  Basically they stuck a total of three tubes in several orifices - don’t want to be too graphic - and pressed a massive piston down onto me as I lay on my back.  Not a moment too soon either.  I was literally about fit to burst by then.  Violet would’ve exploded and you’d never have heard this tale.  The amount of juice they got out of me though - it filled a stout glass cylinder the size of a wardrobe.  Amazing.

Of course, after all that I felt rather deflated.  I didn’t go saggy or anything, surprisingly, but I also stayed blue.  There was no compensation claim or anything because of the contracts everyone had signed, but I still felt sad for quite some time and I used to ask Charlie Bucket plaintively for gum occasionally, but it had been withdrawn due to the effect it had.  I set up a sweet shop with the lifetime supply of chocolate, after I graduated, having put it into cold storage.  I never worked out how the gum worked either.

It was then that I had to start doing the whole make up routine in earnest, more or less every day without fail.  I became a performance artist as well as a chocolatieuse, and managed to do a lot of arty routines involving me being blue, or however you’d describe it.  I didn’t really see my parents any more.

In the end, I married Charlie.  The age gap wasn’t so important after a few years, although we had to wait.  We all had reunions from time to time, and one day I just saw him in a different light, a full-grown handsome young man.  We settled down and had children.  I loved being pregnant, unsurprisingly.  It was the prospect of getting pregnant which motivated me in the bedroom, and in fact in the end it was even better than being inflated.  Bringing new life into the world is a real buzz, which is why I’ve done it five times so far.  We still relive the incident, although with tiny little amounts of the gum nowadays.  It can still blow me up bigger than pregnancy, and we end up with about a year’s supply of juice from each occasion.  We still don’t know where it comes from or how it works, but it gives us as much pleasure as anything in the world.