Toys Come Home (2 page)

StingRay is starting to find Bobby Dot unpleasant. “Why not?”

“Birthday presents come at birthday parties.”

“The mommy said I was a birthday present.”

“Well, maybe she said that to make you feel good. But if you were really a birthday present you would have arrived at the party.”

StingRay knows he is right. She heard the people talking about how she’d failed to be at the party.

It is a bad feeling, this failure. Right at the start of everything. So she pretends to know something she does not.

“I’m the Actual Day of Birth Present,” she tells Bobby Dot. “Haven’t you heard of that?”

The walrus draws his tiny bit of chin back toward his neck. “No.”

“Oh.” StingRay gives a shrill laugh. “I thought everybody knew about those! The Actual Day of Birth Present is this very special kind of blue present

StingRay has spoken so convincingly, she almost believes herself. Bobby Dot’s bright new eyes dim slightly, and she feels a puff of satisfaction.

“Let’s move on,” the walrus says. “Here are some things about this house that you might want to learn.”

StingRay sighs. She wishes she could tell Bobby Dot she already knows everything he could even think to tell her, but the truth is, she needs his information. She links her flipper with the one he’s holding out and the two of them hop off the shelf. As they tour the room, the walrus points out important sights and landmarks. “Don’t talk to the people,” he says. “Just stay still and quiet when they’re around. That’s the bookshelf, make sure you put back anything you look at. The Girl pretty much knows about us. I mean, she talks to us. We just don’t talk back. There’s a TV downstairs. You can watch it when they’re gone for the day but not at night because you might wake someone up. The bathroom is off the hall. There are some towels there and in the linen closet, but they keep to themselves, mostly. It’s like a towel club or something. Not very nice. I wouldn’t want to be a member.”

StingRay follows Bobby Dot and remembers everything.

She still doesn’t like him.

The tall rocking horse in the corner can’t get around on his own, Bobby Dot explains, and he doesn’t talk much. True to this description, the horse blinks his eyes and sniffs StingRay’s proffered flipper to say hello, but he doesn’t say “How dya do?” when she does.

A mischief of toy mice, very small in size, run across the floor to the toy box. The mice giggle among themselves and ignore StingRay. They proceed to pull out a box of small wooden blocks and play a lively game, squeaking and pushing the blocks about with their noses to make a maze. They move so fast StingRay cannot even count them.

“Mice!” cries Bobby Dot, clapping his front flippers together with authority.

The mice ignore him.

“I said, Mice!” He claps again.

Still no response.

Bobby Dot heaves his thick body up and down repeatedly, making heavy banging noises on the carpet.

Whomp!

Whomp!

Whomp!

“Mice, pay attention. I am talking to you!”

The mice pause briefly, a couple of them balancing on top of blocks. A plump white one chews on his own tail.

“This is StingRay,” announces the walrus. “She is a marine animal like me. She has come here to stay. Please give her your attention and courtesy.”

“Sheesh,” mutters the plump white mouse. “You’d think he’d lived here forever, the way he acts.”

Whomp! “Tell her ‘How dya do!’ ” shouts Bobby Dot, thumping his body again.

The mice, unafraid but wanting to go back to their game, squeak “How dya do” at StingRay.

“Let’s move on,” says Bobby Dot.

. . . . .

The Girl and her family return in the evening, and when night falls the dad reads a book about a cat and a doll who live in a tree with a large collection of hats. StingRay listens to the story from her spot on the low shelf. Bobby Dot and Sheep are up on the bed where they can see the pictures.

Then the dad turns out the light and sings until the Girl’s eyes fall shut.

The first day is over.

Sheep and Bobby Dot are asleep on the high bed, now. StingRay wants to sleep, too. In fact, she is very sleepy, but she can’t relax, can’t get comfortable on her hard, lonely shelf.

The toy mice emerge and scuttle about. They pull down a book and open it in front of the horse, who rocks gently as he reads in the near-darkness. The mice begin leapfrogging over one another, squeaking softly. Every now and then the plump white mouse scoots over and flips a page in the horse’s book.

StingRay thinks about going down the hall to meet the towels, but she is nervous that they won’t be friendly, after what Bobby Dot said.

She also isn’t sure what a towel is.

What if it has sharp teeth?

What if it has angry claws?

What if the vicious towels become enraged when a plush stingray tries to join their private conversation?

They might rip her to shreds and eat her for dinner. Or jump on her with their huge, hairy feet

She stays where she is.

After a while, the rocking horse shuts its long-lashed eyes and the toy mice scuttle under the bookshelf to go to bed. StingRay flops down and peers under the shelf at their shining eyes. Maybe she could get to sleep if she slept with them! All one on top of the other like in the dream about the box of other stingrays.

“Hi,” she whispers.

“Oh. Hello there, marine animal!” shouts one mouse. “We’re going to bed now. Night-night!”

“I was wondering. Could I sleep with you?” says StingRay. It is hard for her to ask. She chokes out the words.

“Sure!” cries the mouse. “Come on in!”

So StingRay, feeling awkward and grateful, tries to shove her big plushy body into the narrow flat space beneath the bookshelf.

One flipper goes in. And the tip of her nose.

“We’ll push you!” cries a mouse.

They swarm out from underneath the shelf and begin pushing StingRay with their hard little mouse noses.

They grunt with the effort.

The rest of StingRay’s nose goes in, plus some more flipper. “There!” cries one mouse.

“Great pushing, guys!” cries another.

“We pushed the marine animal. Did you see? Did you see? We pushed it!”

“I saw. I was pushing with you.”

“We pushed it with our noses! High five!”

StingRay’s face is jammed against the shelf, but out of the corner of one eye, she can see the mice bouncing up and down, pleased with themselves.

“I’m not in,” she says.

“You’re
almost
in!” cries a brown mouse. “You just have to make yourself a bit smaller.”

Maybe this is the sort of thing a stingray can do if she tries, StingRay thinks. So she smallens herself, lessens herself, scrunches herself down and diminishes with all her might.

“A little more smaller!” yells the mouse. “Then you’ll be in!”

StingRay tries again, but somehow, she does not diminish. She stays exactly the same.

Maybe it is not the sort of thing a stingray can do if she tries.

“I think I’ll just sleep here,” says StingRay. “Because, you know, stingrays like to sleep out in the cold dark air. We like that better than cozy under bookshelves.”

“Nighty-night, then!” cries a mouse, and they all scuttle under the shelf and make themselves comfortable. StingRay can feel their hard, furry bodies bumping her nose and creeping back and forth across her one flipper that is underneath. It is ticklish. And not at all cozy.

Eventually, the mice settle down and go to sleep, but StingRay can’t see or feel any of them. She waggles her flipper around a bit, looking for a cuddly mouse to comfort her as she tries to rest.

“Marine animal!” She hears a squeak. “Marine animal!”

“What?”

“You are hurting me with your big arm!”

“And you are squashing
me
with your nose on my bed!” cries another voice.

StingRay’s face feels hot and she pulls both her nose and flipper out from under the bookshelf.

“Thank you!” “Nighty-night!” cry the mice.

“Good night,” says StingRay.

She goes back to her shelf and settles herself there for the night. All alone, she sleeps only fitfully.

. . . . .

When the Girl goes to school the next day, she takes Bobby Dot with her and leaves Sheep down on the floor.

Sheep is gray-white and ancient, with four wooden wheels, two felt ears, and a firm wool body. “Before I came here I was Dad’s favorite toy—and Grandpa’s before that,” she says, by way of introduction. “What were you?”

StingRay wasn’t anything before this. This is all she ever was.

“I was … I was…,” she stutters.

Sheep sniffs. “You have a new-toy smell, same as that walrus,” says Sheep. “Is that it? You’re a new toy?”

StingRay does
not
want to have the same smell as Bobby Dot.

“I was the mommy’s,” she lies. “And that is not new-toy smell you’re smelling. That is extremely clean smell,

Sheep sniffs again. “I like clover,” she says, agreeably. “And geraniums. I would like to chew some one day, but I don’t suppose it’ll ever happen.”

Since Sheep seems friendly, StingRay asks her to play a game—and Sheep agrees. But before StingRay can read the instructions and get the checkers set up (Sheep hasn’t got flippers or arms that she can use), there is a gentle snore from the other side of the board.

Sheep is asleep.

StingRay pokes her new friend with a flipper.

She barks “Hello!” in Sheep’s felt ear and even pulls her scrawny tail.

But waking Sheep is impossible.

Slowly, StingRay puts the checkers back in the box.

. . . . .

That night, exhausted, StingRay tries to sleep next to the rocking horse. She creeps across the rug to him and announces, “I’m just going to keep you company here.

Because you seem like you might be lonely.

Like, you want to have someone to sleep next to you,

so the night doesn’t seem so long.

I am going to help you out with that.”

She drapes one soft flipper over the lower rail of the horse’s base.

But it is not very cuddly.

So she climbs, pushing with her tail and clinging with her flippers, onto the horse’s back, then relaxes into the saddle.

But it is kind of wobbly.

She flops onto the horse’s head and flips around to face the other way, so that her long tail trails across his nose and her warm flippers embrace his ears.

The horse coughs.

“What?” StingRay whispers.

“No thank you.”

“Oh, come on. It’ll be so nice! You won’t feel lonely anymore!”

“No
thank you,
” says the horse firmly. Then he shakes his head, the way horses do to ward off flies. His mane swings out and his nose arcs through the air and StingRay is flung sharply across the room to land—

on the high bed with the fluffy pillows.

Hooray! This is perfect.

StingRay can sleep with Sheep, Bobby Dot, and the Girl!

Carefully, carefully she creeps up to the head of the bed. Sheep is clutched in the Girl’s chubby palm, Bobby Dot is under the covers.

Both of them wake as StingRay settles herself between them.

“I was dreaming of clover,” mutters Sheep, sleepily.

“I was dreaming of sharks,” whispers Bobby Dot, irritably.

“I’m going to sleep on the high bed now!” announces StingRay, trying to sound confident. “Because I’m the Actual Day of Birth Present. We’re all going to be cuddling together from now on!”

Sheep eyes Bobby Dot. “It’s already a lot more crowded here than it used to be,” she says, meaningfully. “Before the birthday, there was plenty of room in this bed.”

Bobby Dot eyes Sheep right back. “It would be fine if some people didn’t have hard wooden parts,” he says.

“It would be fine,” says Sheep, “if some people didn’t have teeth that are way larger than regular teeth that people have. And also if those people with the teeth didn’t talk so much all the time when other people are trying to rest.”

“I don’t have teeth,” says StingRay. “Or wooden parts. I’m an extremely cuddly stingray. And you won’t believe how quiet I can be.”

She looks hopefully at Sheep.

Sheep has already gone back to sleep.

“
I’m
going to be awake for hours,” complains Bobby Dot. “I can’t believe you woke us like this. Don’t you know it’s sleepytime?”