Emily Jenkins - Toy Dance Party

Finally, the man calls up the stairs and Honey’s dad comes down. “I don’t know if I can fix it,” the workman tells him. “You got an old machine. I’m gonna send away for a part, should come in by Wednesday, and I’m hoping that’ll give you another couple years with this one. But I’m not gonna promise.”

“All right,” says the dad.

“If this one’s finished, and you buy your new machine from us, the installation’s free.”

“That would be great.”

The two men leave without taking Lumphy out of the washer.

When they are gone, the buffalo pokes his head out from under Frank’s lid and looks at the big brown wreck of a dryer. She sits at a sad and awkward angle, pulled out from the wall.

“What’s wrong with her?” he asks again.

“She started squeaking,” explains Frank, in a voice that has none of its usual energy. “Then her tumble didn’t sound right, and yesterday she couldn’t dry a load of dad-clothes. Just couldn’t get them dry at all. They were damp, I tell you,” he sobs. “She had damp dad-clothes in her!”

“I am so sorry,” Lumphy tells him.

“Well, yeah,” says Frank. “I know.”

“I hope you feel better,” Lumphy calls to the Dryer.

“She can’t answer you,” says Frank. “She hasn’t even grunted since two days ago.”

“Oh.”

Lumphy doesn’t know what to say. He wishes he could do something to help, but there isn’t anything to do.

“Did you hear what they said?” worries Frank. “If they can’t fix her, they’ll replace her. Like she was nobody. Like she was a used-up piece of trash.”

Lumphy nods. He heard, but it is too horrible to think about.

“They’ll bring some stranger here to live with me and dry the clothes, expecting me to like it,” says Frank. “Don’t they see we have feelings?”

“I don’t think they do,” says Lumphy. “They’re nice people, but they really only care about other people, you know?”

“I know,” says Frank. “That’s how this life is.”

. . . . .

Lumphy hangs on a clothesline in the bright spring air of the backyard, where he watches Honey and her mother plant petunias. When he is dry, Honey takes him down and brings him indoors. “We’re going on a sleepover,” she tells him.

She shoves Lumphy in her backpack along with Plastic, StingRay, a box of glitter makeup, clean clothes, a toothbrush, and a pair of pajamas. Quite a tight fit indeed. Lumphy’s hind end is squashed to one side and the toothbrush is poking him in the stomach, while StingRay’s left flipper is twisted behind her back and her nose is jammed up against a button.

“Sleepover! Sleepover!” whispers Plastic, joyfully, when the zipper is shut.

“What is it, anyhow?” Lumphy wants to know.

Plastic has no idea.

“A sleepover is when you build a loft,” says StingRay. “It’s way high in the air, up in a tree,

like a loft bed in a treetop,

with a tent.

You have blankets up there,

and there are birds that fly over to you with

baskets of cupcakes in their beaks.

You eat cupcakes and look down over the

forest, to the town below.

Then you make wishes on the stars you see,

because there are so many stars when you’re

up on top of the world,

and then you go to sleep.

You are up high, over the rest of everything,

and you’re sleeping, so it’s a sleepover.”

“Hooray!” says Plastic. “I can’t wait.”

“I wish we didn’t have to go in this backpack,” complains Lumphy. “It’s too small, too dark, and it smells like permanent marker.”

Just then, Honey unzips the backpack and takes StingRay out. “I forgot, you don’t like the backpack, do you?” she says, giving StingRay a kiss where StingRay’s cheeks would be if she had cheeks. “I’ll carry you in my arms.”

Specialness! Specialness forever and ever! StingRay can’t help smiling as Honey zips the backpack closed.

Lumphy and Plastic are in the dark. “How come she remembers that StingRay doesn’t like the backpack, but she doesn’t remember that I don’t like the backpack?” mutters Lumphy.

Plastic doesn’t know. She doesn’t like the backpack, either.

. . . . .

The sleepover is not like StingRay said it would be. It is at Honey’s friend Shay’s house, in Shay’s bedroom. Shay’s bedroom is not over anything. Actually, it is on the ground floor.

Honey is sleeping over night at Shay’s.

“Now I get it. This is the indoor over night kind of sleepover,” says StingRay while the girls are in the kitchen eating dinner. “You know, she didn’t say it was that kind. If she’d said it was that kind, I would have explained it to you.”

“That’s okay,” says Plastic. But she is disappointed.

The toys are sitting on a blow-up mattress on Shay’s floor. When the girls finish eating, they come in and play Clue until Shay discovers it was Colonel Mustard in the conservatory with the lead pipe. Then they put glitter makeup on each other. Shay also puts glitter makeup on her stuffed duck while Honey tries on dress-up clothes.

StingRay would really like some glitter makeup.

Plastic would really like some glitter makeup, too.

Even Lumphy would not mind some glitter makeup, so long as he could wash it off, later.

But Honey isn’t playing with them, checking on them, or even talking about them. She is pulling her Barbie box out of a plastic shopping bag. She brought that stupid box and those silent Barbies along on the sleepover!

Honey and Shay dress the Barbies,

and undress the Barbies,

and brush their hair,

and put their hair in ponytails,

and dress the Barbies,

and undress the Barbies,

and wonder why one of them has teeth marks

on its leg,

and why the other one has teeth marks on its

hand,

and then forget about that

and dress the Barbies,

and undress the Barbies,

and brush their hair,

and dress the Barbies again.

For a very long time.

Finally, they pack up and it seems as if maybe they’re going to do something with Lumphy, StingRay, and Plastic—but instead, they jump on the blow-up bed and perform a circus extravaganza for Shay’s mom, complete with capes, a clown wig, tumbling, and faux-tightrope walking.

Plastic likes the circus, because it’s very bouncy. She wishes she could perform in it—but she isn’t invited. Lumphy and StingRay can’t even see it. They have fallen off the bed, what with all the jumping, and are lying on the floor—upside down in a pile of dress-up clothes—and missing the entire extravaganza.

Frankly, the whole sleepover is pretty boring and sometimes upsetting.

The girls put on nightgowns and wash themselves in the bathroom, then come back and lie in bed with the lights out, whispering. Whispering so much, StingRay doesn’t even get much of a cuddle.

It is very late indeed before their talk dwindles. StingRay, used to going to bed with Honey every night at eight-thirty, sulks herself to sleep long before Lumphy and Plastic deem the house quiet enough to begin moving around.

“Did you see that upside-down spinny thing they did in the circus extravaganza?” asks Plastic, giving a bounce. “I wonder if I could do that.”

“I couldn’t see,” sighs Lumphy. “I was underneath a cape.”

“I saw it,” pipes up Shay’s duck with the glitter makeup. “It’s called a handstand forward roll.”

“Then I would probably need hands for it, huh?” Plastic rolls over to the duck.

“Probably.”

“How do you do?” says Plastic. “I’m a ball.”

“I can tell,” says the duck. “My name is Buttermilk.”