The Toy Tinker: Scissors and Birthdays

It is very, very likely the first date you ever learned was your birthday. Your birthday, after all, is the one day on which everything revolves around you and no one can call you snobby for saying so. There is a cake the size of your head. With your name on it. And your mother pretends that she doesn't see your index finger cutting into the hills of colored frosting before the candles are even lit.

On an especially chilly day, all cloud gray and leaf red, Jay was picking her way through the junkyard behind the Tick Tock house. This was one of her favorite ways to pass the time--she found friends among the piles of discarded toys, their lovely noisy and light-up bits. She wondered sometimes if she were a toy, would she still have no legs? Would she be left in this place made for broken things?

Most days in the yard ended with Jay's arms full of bright, knotted wires, blocks of wood, springs and puffs of stuffing. But this day, she found something too special to be distracted by anything else:

She was on the north end of the yard, opposite her house, when the wheels of her rolling chair jerked to a halt. Jay and her pigtails flopped forward with unexpected force. That's when she saw the perfect glass face peeking out from the muck of ash and blue mud. It was pale, a full cheek coming to a point in a tiny bulb chin. The one visible eye shone in a color that was almost a deep purple. A little four-fingered hand was sprouted like a tiny tree from the cold ground. Instinctively, Jay stroked the hand with her thumb.

"Who would want to throw you away, bitty one?"

She righted herself in the mud and reached for the spade in her belt. With slow, mother-like care, she pulled the stubborn earth away from the doll with the shining tip.

"It's alright, I've got you."

When at last Jay pulled the doll from the ground, she saw why she had been in the yard: Half of her face was gone, cracks spidering across the bridge of her delicate nose and rounded mouth. Jay plucked bits of leaf from the doll's dark curls and drew her inside her coat.

"Poor Dolly," she whispered, a tear shining on her cheek, "I'll fix you. I promise."

With that, Jay pulled herself into her chair and began to navigate her way back to the house. She had work to do.