Toys Come Home: being the early experiences of an intelligent stingray, a brave buffalo, and a brand-new someone called Plastic

CHAPTER SIX

The Arrival of Plastic, and Also the Reason We Are Here

StingRay and Lumphy are playing Hungry Hungry Hippos. The Girl left it out on the rug last night, a game in which white marbles get eaten by plastic hippopotami. Each player hits a lever to make his or her hippo stretch out its neck and chomp a marble.

StingRay is winning. Game after game.

After game.

“Why is more marbles the best?” wonders Lumphy. “Shouldn’t you stop eating when you’re full? My hippo was full a long time ago.”

“More marbles are best because it’s winning,” answers StingRay.

“Is it winning, though, if my hippo overeats and gets a tummyache?”

“Hippos don’t get tummyaches,” says StingRay. “Hippos think more is better because it’s winning.”

“My hippo is feeling sick!” says Lumphy, crossly.

Feet sound on the stairs and StingRay and Lumphy stop playing and lie cutely on the floor. The toys can hardly believe it, but nearly a year has passed since Lumphy’s arrival and today is the Girl’s birthday party. She is old enough now that her party is at a bowling alley (whatever that is), and when she comes in she’s wearing a special dress with ruffly lace at the bottom. She putters around the room, putting barrettes in her hair and looking at herself in the mirror.

Lumphy wants to go to the party. He has never been to a party before, and he thinks it sounds like something he would like a lot. He wonders if there will be dancing.

StingRay wants to go to the party, too. She wonders if there will be ruffly lace for her to wear.

“Honey!” the mommy calls up the stairs. “Time to go!”

The Girl grabs StingRay and Lumphy and shoves them into the backpack. It smells like—like what?

StingRay thinks it smells like sour milk. Lumphy thinks it smells like pencil shavings.

“Sour milk.”

“No, pencil shavings.”

“Sour milk.”

“No, pencil shavings.”

Lumphy nips StingRay’s plush flipper with his buffalo teeth.

StingRay pokes Lumphy in the eye with the tip of her tail.

Buh-buh bump! The backpack goes down the stairs.

Whoosh! It swings out the door, and—

Plunk! Drops into the trunk of the car.

“Maybe we shouldn’t play that hippo game together anymore,” says Lumphy, feeling sorry and sick to his stomach. “I think it makes me cranky.”

“I think it makes you cranky, too.”

“Bowling will be better.”

“We should definitely bowl.”

Their quarrel over, StingRay wraps her tail around Lumphy’s middle. They wait out the car ride together.

“Hey,” says Lumphy, as the car engine turns off. “What’s bowling again?”

“Bowling is …” StingRay pauses for a moment because she wants to give Lumphy an answer, wants to feel important and helpful, but doesn’t actually know. “Bowling is when everybody drinks ginger ale from bowls instead of cups,” she says, eventually. “And wears bowls on their heads, kind of like hats,

and has their hair cut in the shapes of the bowls!

They all play drums with chopsticks on the bowls on each other’s heads.

Bowling is also when there are especially big bowls filled with warm soapy water,

and people wash their feet in them,

which is a good thing to do at birthday

parties because then everybody has really clean feet after,

plus new haircuts,

so they all feel fresh,

and nobody is ever thirsty because of all the bowls of ginger ale.”

“Okay,” says Lumphy. “Let’s definitely do that.”

“Definitely.”

“Although, not the washing part.”

“No,” says StingRay.

“Or the haircuts.”

“Not the haircuts, either. Just the hats and the drumming.”

“Exactly,” says Lumphy.

. . . . .

At the bowling alley, the Girl opens the backpack and swings Lumphy and StingRay by their tails as the parents greet guests. When everyone is there, the children all change shoes and take turns standing in front of a long wooden pathway, rolling heavy round objects, kind of like giant marbles, toward groups of wooden bottles.

The adults yell “Strike!” and “Spare!” and “Not the gutter, not the gutter!”

A few of the children cry.

Lumphy and StingRay sit on the pile of jackets and watch. Lumphy wonders where the bowls of warm soapy water and ginger ale are, but he doesn’t say anything. Instead he asks, in a whisper: “What is the point? With the round things and the bottles. What’s the point?”

“Winning,” says StingRay.

“How do you win?”

StingRay doesn’t know, but she’s embarrassed about the lack of soapy water and ginger ale and doesn’t want Lumphy to lose faith in her. “Whoever’s got the most round things,” she answers, with false confidence.

“But isn’t everyone sharing round things?”

“No.”

“Oh,” says Lumphy. “I thought they were, because. Um. They’re sharing them. See? The Girl is using the same one the boy with the red hair used.”

“They only look like they’re sharing them,” explains StingRay. “It’s a very complicated thing that’s going on.”

“I still don’t see the point,” says Lumphy.

When the rolling of round things is done, everyone moves to a room in the back of the building where they eat pizza and then chocolate peanut-butter birthday cake with frosting roses. The Girl opens her presents in a flurry of colored paper and curls of ribbon.

“Will there be a new friend in there?” Lumphy asks StingRay.

“How should I know?”

“I thought you knew almost everything,” the buffalo says, mildly.

“Oh.” StingRay is pleased. “Well. Thank you for noticing. But I can’t predict the future.”

The Girl unwraps a game called Uncle Wiggily, two Barbie dolls with blank motionless faces, several glittery Barbie dresses and a shiny pink box to keep them in, markers, a beading kit, and a nightgown.

“Nobody,” says Lumphy, forlornly.

“Nobody,” echoes StingRay.

Lumphy thinks maybe now there will be the hats and haircuts and the drumming and washing feet, but no. Some people have seconds on cake, some people are playing with the discarded ribbon, and some people are jumping on the seats, yelling.

And then—the party is over. Each kid gets a paper goody bag to take home. Children pull out swirly lollipops, sticker books, and red bouncy round things.

The Girl gets a goody bag, too, even though she is the hostess. When they leave the bowling alley, she shoves it into the backpack along with Lumphy and StingRay.

Once they are in the trunk of the car, the round thing in the goody bag begins to wiggle.

And roll a tiny bit.

Boing, boing!

It even bounces—tight small bounces inside the bag.

Every time it moves, it’s making a papery crinkling thump.

Boing, boing, crackle!!

Crackle, boing, boing, BOING!

It appears the round thing is somebody.

Not nobody after all.

It will not stop bouncing and wiggling and trying to roll. Inside the paper bag, inside the backpack, inside the trunk of the car.

“Excuse me,” says StingRay, finally. (Lumphy is sick to his stomach and doesn’t feel like talking.) “Excuse me, but you are bonking us in here. There’s not enough room for you to be so hyper.”

“Good morning!” cries the round thing.

“It’s afternoon.”

“Good afternoon!”

“Don’t feel bad you missed the party,” says StingRay, kindly. “It doesn’t really matter.”

“Party party party!” says the round thing, spinning in place.

“No. You missed the party,” says StingRay. “But don’t feel bad.”

“Isn’t this a party?” the thing asks.

“No.”

“But isn’t a party when three or more people have a good time together? I don’t really know, but somehow I think that’s what a party is!”

“I suppose so, yes.”

“Then it’s a party!” cries the thing. “One person, me. Two person, the large guy with legs I can feel over on my left—”

“Buffalo.”

“And three person, you, you nice soft plushy—”

“Marine animal,” says StingRay.

“Mammal!” cries the thing. “And we’re all here together having an excellent time. Party party party!”

“Not mammal. Fish,” corrects StingRay.

“It’s my first party,” says the round thing, bouncing softly. “Lucky me!”

. . . . .

The Girl tries several names for the round thing.

Maria.

No.

LopLop.

No.

Snickers.

No.

Plastic! The Girl says it over and over, as if she likes the sound.

“How about Penny?” says the mother. “Short for Penelope.”

“No. Plastic,” says the Girl.

“Penny’s a real name, but it’s also cute. And pennies are round,” continues the mom, as if she hasn’t heard.

“Plastic!” The Girl plants a kiss on the round thing’s fat red surface.

And the name sticks.

For the next several days, the Girl spends a lot of time throwing Plastic toward the ceiling and catching her again.

Blop! Blop!

Plastic actually seems to like it.

When she’s not being thrown in the air or rolled across the room, and when the Girl has gone to school and the toys have the house to themselves all morning, Plastic spends her time looking through the books on the shelves. Lumphy or the toy mice get them down for her, and she reads rather quickly, even if she doesn’t understand all the words.

“What is a croissant?” she asks StingRay one day.

“A kind of monster.”

“Oh. Okay. And what is a snickerdoodle?”

“Another kind of monster.”

“Okay.” Plastic reads on.

StingRay and Lumphy are looking out the window at the guy next door raking leaves in his yard.

“Why is the sky blue?” asks Plastic after a few minutes.

“Blue is the best color,” says StingRay.

“Why? Why is it the best color?” Plastic leaves her book and bounces up to rest near her friends on the windowsill.

“It just always has been.”

“Why do we call it blue?”

“Because it sounds like ‘blew,’ as in ‘I blew out the candles.’ ” StingRay rears up to explain better. “And everybody knows that wind is blue. And breath is blue. If you were painting them in a painting, you’d paint them blue.”

“Or gray,” says Lumphy.

“If you wanted it to be right, you’d paint them blue,” says StingRay.

“And why are we here?” says Plastic. “That’s the thing I really need to know.”

“What do you mean, why are we here?” StingRay asks.

“Why are we here in the Girl’s room? In this town, on this planet?” explains Plastic.

StingRay doesn’t know what to say.

Plastic bounces, expectantly. “I thought you would know.”

“We. We—” StingRay still can’t reply.

The toys are waiting for an answer.

“I’ll tell you later,” says StingRay, finally. “Right now I have some important stuff to do.”

“Why did you have to ask that, Plastic?” moans Lumphy. “It makes my head hurt thinking about it.”

“Sorry!” Plastic rolls around him apologetically.

StingRay’s head hurts, too. But she doesn’t mention it.

. . . . .

That night, Lumphy can’t sleep. His eyes feel sore and heavy, but he keeps thinking about the question Plastic asked. Why are we here? In the Girl’s room? In this town? On this planet?

Lumphy doesn’t know.

And he can tell that StingRay doesn’t know. Which is pretty worrying, because StingRay knows nearly everything.

Lumphy’s eyes stay open all night.

The next morning, when the people are away at work and school, Plastic starts asking questions again.

“What’s a robot?”

“Something that’s not alive but seems alive,” answers StingRay.

Plastic thinks this answer over. “Are we robots?” she asks, finally.

“Certainly not.” StingRay is pretty sure.

“And how come we’re here, again?” Plastic asks. “I forgot what you said yesterday.”

“Stop asking that!” Lumphy barks. “Stop asking how come! Stop asking why! You are making my head hurt again.”

Plastic stops, like she did before. But she asks again the next day. And the next.

She is really trying not to ask, she honestly is—but she just wants to know. So, so badly. Evening after evening, the question pops out.

Why are we here?

Then: night after night, Lumphy cannot sleep.

Wondering.

Wondering.

Why he is here. Why any of them are here.

Why the mice are here.

The Girl.

StingRay, Sheep, Plastic, the rocking horse.

It is scary that StingRay doesn’t know, and scary that there might not be an answer at all.

. . . . .

One Saturday night, StingRay wakes at two a.m. The Girl is breathing deeply in sleep and the rest of the room is dark and quiet, just like it always is—but something is different. StingRay looks around.

The one-eared sheep is asleep under the rocking horse.

Plastic is quiet on the windowsill.

But Lumphy is not on his shelf.

StingRay scans the room. Lumphy is not on the carpet. Not in the corner. Not anywhere.

Bonk! StingRay hits the floor. She has a bad feeling about this.

Boing! Plastic follows her. She never sleeps very heavily.

Together, they scoot down the hall and peek into the grown-up bedroom.

Nothing.

Silently, they inch to the top of the stairs.

The television is on, down in the living room.

Fwap! Gobble-a gobble-a.

Fwap! Gobble-a gobble-a.

Boing, boing, boing!

Fwap! Gobble-a gobble-a.

Bonk!

StingRay and Plastic go downstairs.

All the lights in the living room are on! Lumphy is sitting very close to the television with a dazed look on his face.

“No TV at night!” StingRay chides him. “You could wake the people. No TV and no lights. You know that.”

“I need it,” Lumphy moans. “I need the light. I need the TV.”

“How come?” Plastic wants to know.

“Dread,” says Lumphy. “I have dread.”

“What’s that?” Plastic is feeling rather bouncy, now that she’s fully awake. She zooms around the living room.

“It has to do with too much dark. And not knowing why we’re here. And not sleeping,” says Lumphy. “I just need the light really bad.”

“You have to turn it off,” says StingRay with authority. “I’ll get you a flashlight.”

Plastic bounces herself at the light switches and then at the television. The TV goes off and the room falls into darkness.

StingRay rummages in a kitchen drawer she knows about, bringing back a large red flashlight and flipping it on.

They all three sit there, looking at the beam of the flashlight playing against the wall.

“Still dread,” says Lumphy. “Dread and more dread.”

“How about another flashlight?” StingRay rushes back to the drawer and brings another.

Lumphy turns it on. He stares at the pool of light it makes, darker and yellower than that made by the other flashlight.

“Still dread,” he says, after a while.

“Look at my shadow!” says Plastic. She bounces across the beams of light. “Look at me go! Hey, do you know why shadows get bigger and smaller? Why do shadows get bigger and smaller?”

“Why are we here?” moans Lumphy.

“You should go upstairs to bed,” says StingRay. “I think you’re really tired.”

“I can’t sleep,” says Lumphy. “I can’t sleep for all the wondering.”

StingRay is quite tired herself. She is used to sleeping all night with the Girl. But she will not leave her friend when he needs her. “Come with me,” she tells him. “There’s a light in the linen closet. The people will never notice it’s on. You can lie in there with the towels and sheets and things.”

She leads the way, even though she is a little nervous about the mean towel club that Bobby Dot mentioned so long ago. She has never spoken with any towel but TukTuk, but StingRay knows that the purple grown-up towels inhabit both the adult bathroom and the linen closet at the far end of the hall. She squashes down her fear and lurches up the stairs, pushing with her tail. Plastic and Lumphy follow.

When they get to the closet, StingRay slides one flipper underneath the door and pulls sharply. It pops open, and Plastic bounces herself at the light switch inside.

“Sleeping!”

“Sleeping!”

“Sleeping!”

A chorus of purple towels, stacked neatly one on top of the other, sits on a low shelf. Higher up are sheets, pillowcases, boxes of tissues, and rolls of toilet paper.

“Hello!” cries Plastic. “How’s it going in here?”

“Sleeping!”

“Sleeping!”

“Sleeping!”

“Sorry to wake you,” says StingRay, without introducing herself. “But my friend here has dread.”

“Sleeping!”

“Sleeping!”

“Sleeping!”

“He wants to sleep. We all want to sleep,” explains StingRay. “But he’s scared of the dark. We have to come here so he can have light without waking the people.”

“Must you have the light on?” asks the towel on the top of the pile. Its terry-cloth corner waggles in irritation.

“Yes, we must!” snaps StingRay. “I just told you he has to have light. The whole reason he came in here was for light!”

“I need light because I have dread,” says Lumphy, turning around three times before lying down in the corner of the closet.

Plastic rolls over and tucks her round body into the curve of Lumphy’s buffalo stomach. She hums, quietly: “Dum da DUM, da dada DUM dum dum, DUM dum dum, DUM dum dum.”

“Do you know the words to that song?” asks Lumphy.

Plastic does not. “I don’t think it has words,” she says. “I think it’s just a hum.”

“Oh, please. Everyone knows the words to that,” says the towel on top.

“True. I know them,” says another towel.

“So do I.”

“So do I.” All the towels agree.

“What are they?” Plastic wants to know.

“Oh, the more we get together,

Together,

Together,

The more we get together

The happier we’ll be.”

The towels’ voices merge in silky harmony, not loud enough to wake the people, but loud enough to fill the small bright linen closet with music.

“Party party party!” says Plastic.

“ ’Cause your friends are my friends

And my friends are your friends,

So the more we get together,

The happier we’ll be!”

The second time around, Plastic and StingRay join in. As she sings, StingRay scoots over to Lumphy and taps him gently with the tip of her tail.

“Lumphy,” she whispers, as the towels stop singing and begin an argument as to whether they should next do “Goodnight, Irene” or “Michael, Row the Boat Ashore.”

“Yes?” The buffalo is calm now, but his eyes are still wide open and his mouth is twisted in anxiety.

“I figured out the answer,” says StingRay. “To Plastic’s question.”

“You did?” asks Lumphy.

“You did?” asks Plastic.

“Yes,” says StingRay, proudly.

“What is it?” asks Lumphy.

“Why are we here?” asks Plastic.

“We are here,” says StingRay, “for each other.”

Oh.

Of course we are.

Of course we are here for each other.

“For each other! For each other!” cries Plastic, bouncing up. “You found the answer!”

Lumphy feels the agony and the tension rush out of his buffalo body.

We are here for each other. StingRay is right.

The toys have been here for each other. And they will be.

The dread is gone.

StingRay tucks herself up against Lumphy, tummy touching tail. The two of them watch Plastic roll happily in circles.

“You can turn the light off now,” says Lumphy. “I think I can sleep.”

So Plastic bounces the light switch, and comes to rest by Lumphy’s head.

The towels sing, “Hallelujah.”

And the toys are there for each other, in the bottom of the linen closet, at the end of the hallway.

In the Girl’s house. In the night. In the town.

On the continent, on the planet.

In the universe.

Together.