Act I

1. The Bukavac

At night, in the rain, a special one was left in the back yard of an orphanage. The child was scrawny, underfed. He blinked against the raindrops. What made him special was that he was covered, head to toe, in orange fur, which had become soaking wet and streaked with mud. The child was lost, afraid, without a mother. He tumbled into a puddle and let out a raspy cry.

The puddle had formed in a hollow in the lawn, like an accidental pond, in the back yard of the decaying Tudor-style mansion that served as the community orphanage. Although covered in fur, the creature was, in actuality, a boy, abandoned, as many unwanted children were, without so much as a note or a knock at the door. He coughed and mewled. Two lean cats watched from a woodshed. Up from the puddle, the furry boy rose on two shaky legs. The cats hissed.

A porch door creaked open. Light shone across the back yard. 

“Get in house, my little fools!” an older woman barked to her cats. The woman, Matka Zula, was the headmistress of the orphanage. She was stocky and imposing and wore a cape shawl of red and gray. “Animals going wild in April showers.” She touched the babushka covering her eel-dark hair. “And Matka just got hair done.” She pounded a broom handle up against the porch ceiling until a light bulb flickered on.

The cats darted across the yard, up the brick steps, and through the doorway. 

The boy tottered out of the shadows. 

“What is this?” Matka peered into the night. “Raccoon back for more, I think.” She wielded the broom like a weapon. “Come and get—wait me for second. What is this?”

The boy crawled up the steps. Water rushed past his feet, and rain pelted his body. 

Matka Zula saw not a boy but a furry creature. The little thing looked like a bear cub. “This is bukavac!” she cried. “This is Slavic demon born of mud and water!” She swung the broom. Her effort whipped her cape shawl into a swirling tornado. Struck hard, the little boy tumbled back down the steps as her broom swung upward and smashed the light bulb to bits. “Bukavac!” Matka cried as glass rained down. She backed inside and shut the door. 

The boy moaned. He rose from the mud. He crawled back up the steps. A loose brick tumbled onto his hand. He yelped.

Matka Zula, wielding the broom, stood guard inside the house. She heard the crunching of glass as the creature padded across the porch. He cried as the glass cut his feet. At the base of the back door was a pet door for the cats. The creature was too big to fit, but he was still trying to push his head through the opening.

“Ah!” yelled Matka. She swatted the pet door. “Get! Get! Matka’s house will not be your house!”

She heard scratching. The night fell quiet. The rain slowed. Scritching could be heard. Maybe the creature was getting tired. Matka placed one hand against the door and whispered, “Matka Zula will never let you welcome into this house, dirty bukavac.” 

The boy howled.

~~~

Ten years later, the boy pressed his furry hand against the white door in the upstairs bathroom of the orphanage. 

Matka Zula pounded. “Hurry, Bukavac!” 

He growled. He hated that name, and she had never given him another one.

Finally, her pounding stopped, and he could finish getting ready. It was one of the special days when adults visited, and he wanted to look as much as possible like a good boy. 

He looked in the bathroom mirror. There he was, an orange monster boy, with fur everywhere: short fuzz, very fine, covered his face; hair-like fur swept back over his head; and longer fur cascaded pretty much everywhere else, except for the tough pads of his hands and feet, which were ashy gray. He was a boy, not a monster, underneath all this orange fur, but he felt like a monster when he looked at himself. There were no other boys like him. They were all just boys. He was not. 

He wet his fingers in the faucet and pushed his hair back over his scalp. He tamed his eyebrows in the same way, but they sprang back. He dug in a drawer and found a small pair of scissors. He trimmed his eyebrows until little orange hairs collected in the basin of the sink. His eyes were blue. He blinked and dusted the stray hairs from his brow. 

He shut his eyes tight. This morning, he was trying not to be his usual self. He had orange fur, and who had orange fur? No one, ever. And who wanted a boy with orange fur? No one . . . so far. So he wanted to be a new version of himself. He wanted to see this new version in the mirror: a normal boy in nice clothes. He took a deep breath and imagined looking through the eyes of the prospective parents soon to be scanning a room full of orphaned boys. He whispered, “Somebody will see me.” And then . . . he opened his eyes. 

The suit could not contain him. His fur exploded out of the navy-blue suit, spilled over his collar, and shot out of his cuffs. He snorted and grimaced. He pushed the tufts of his fur down into his neck and back into his shirt and back up his sleeve cuffs. They sprang out again. He sighed. 

He unlocked the door.

“Ah,” said Matka Zula. She clapped before she really saw him, and her jewelry jingled. Her hair had faded to ash gray during the years she had been enduring Bukavac’s presence. “This was Hammy’s suit,” Matka said. “Hammy has family now. What about you? Can Matka be rid of you?” Once she looked closely, she realized it was hopeless. “You will never get family looking like this.”

“Gumball has one job,” cracked Elbrus, flicking at a tuft of orange fur, “and that’s to make us look good.” 

He didn’t like the name Bukavac, but the nickname the boys had for him wasn’t much better: Gumball. He felt like he was never seen as a boy. He was either a demon or a plaything, something scary or something funny: a furry monster or an orange gumball.

Matka Zula licked her fingers and slicked down the mean boy’s hair that shot out wild and fuzzy from under his baseball cap, which Elbrus wore backwards. Her silver thumb rings snagged a tangle of his hair, and she yanked. 

“Ow,” whined Elbrus.

She smacked Elbrus on the back. “Get in line, greasy weasel. You, too, Bukavac. Back of line.” 

Boys lined the hallway. The boys stood to the right as Matka Zula swept up the row to inspect them. She was cloaked in her cape shawl that was more complicated than any normal cape shawl. There were layers, drapes, nooks, and crannies. The whole outfit seemed formless and clung to her body in some mysterious system of wraps and knots of twine, hidden belts and jangling jewelry. The boys looked at her and thought of wolves, dungeons, mountains, and storm clouds. She would move gently but powerfully. Her cloak would undulate like the wings of a manta ray. The next moment, she would pivot, and her cloak would whip like the cape of a magician. Her movements sent plumes of odors swirling into their noses, odors of onions and oranges, roses and mold. Her costume seemed to morph to fit her moods. She always wore the same colors, and in the halls of the orphanage, her colors were blood and stone. 

Reaching the head of the line of boys, she grabbed the chin of Jonday and looked at his teeth. “You smell like soap, but why teeth so yellow?” 

Jonday shrugged. 

“Everyone sees teeth. Don’t smile. Boys!” she called down the row. She unspooled the leather tendril that hung from somewhere inside her right sleeve. She snapped the long braided cord against a floorboard. “Check teeth!” She spun the leather tendril, and it retracted into her sleeve. “Yellow teeth? No smiles!”

In pairs, boys pretended to check each other’s teeth.

“Do I have yellow teeth, Gumball?” Fiho asked. Fiho was blond and small and wore an orange shirt with an illustration of an orange slice perched above the word Crush.

“No,” said Gumball. “You’re fine.”

Matka walked up the row saying, “No smiles! No smiles! You smile, okay. You okay. You, no smiles!”

“Your teeth are awesome,” said Fiho, reaching up to touch an incisor. “I wish I had a fang.”

“No, you don’t,” said Gumball. “Turn around.”

“I’m wearing cargo shorts like you said.”

“Good,” said Gumball. “We just need to make sure.” Gumball pulled at the back of Fiho’s cargo shorts, and a stubby tail popped out, fuzzy and blond. “Relax,” said Gumball, tucking in Fiho’s tail and tightening the waistband of the cargo shorts. “You have to be really, really careful. No one else is like me, and no one else is like you. Do you understand?”

“That tickles,” laughed Fiho. 

“Stop it,” said Gumball, turning Fiho around and holding him at the shoulders. “I know you just got here, and you don’t understand Maddox yet. You don’t understand Matka yet. You’ve been lucky so far, but this isn’t funny. This is serious.”

“I know. I promise. I’ll be careful.”

“No one,” said Gumball, scowling, “and I mean no one can ever find out.”

Fiho looked scared. He was as pale and sensitive as the boy on the package of Matka’s tea biscuits. Fiho nodded.

Near the head of the line, Jonday bounced his red ball against the opposite wall. Mark smacked Jonday, and Jonday fell to the floor. The ball bounced down the hallway. 

“Boys!” yelled Matka.

“He wouldn’t show me his teeth,” said Mark, a tall boy with such a bad buzz cut that white scalp glowed like snow through patches of black hair. 

Elbrus, Mark, and Philliph wore baggy basketball shorts from Bryten Star High School, which had the colors black and yellow. The donated basketball shorts were old ones from the varsity team, so they were way too long for the younger boys.

The red ball rolled down the hallway. Gumball, who never wore shoes, nabbed it with his toes.

Jonday got back up and stood in line.

Matka Zula led the boys down the hall to the playroom. There were two doors side by side at the end of the hallway. The doors led to separate rooms. She opened the door on the left and stood to one side. She delivered her instructions as the boys filed past her. 

“Behave,” she said. “They want good boys. Good boys share. Good boys quiet. Good boys don’t fight, don’t yell. And Bukavac,” she said, as he brought up the back of the line, “you sit. Be like stone.”

“Yes, Matka.”

Matka Zula shut the door on them and opened the door on the right, which led into the viewing room. The room was awash in dark burgundy: walls and curtains and carpet. It was occupied by many adults. It was against the rules for her to allow prospective parents to view the boys in this way, but she manipulated the situation to make money on the side. While she would do anything to make money, she could never make the money she wanted, not in this unforgiving place. The room was lit by a lamp on a side table. Also on the side table were business cards that read, “Maddox Hathorne Home for Boys.” Drawn curtains hung from the longest wall. Matka placed herself in front of the curtains.

“Welcome to Maddox Hathorne Home for Boys,” said Matka Zula. “You call me Matka Zula. Matka is Polish, means ‘mother.’ I am mother for these boys but only little while. Soon, mothers and fathers come. New families. New life. I love for that. Okay? That is purpose. Now you listen while I explain. Hear this good.” 

Matka Zula shuffled and tottered, as if she were tipsy from drinking wine. 

“I don’t know what going on. This not happening. It is all ‘accident.’” 

At the word accident, Matka Zula used finger quotes. She clutched a curtain and drew it open. 

“I am sorry. How could this happen?” 

She drew open the other half of the curtains. “No harm, no fool,” she said. “Not supposed to see boys. Lawman says many rules, but Matka says only little accident.” 

She clicked her thumb rings against the window. “One-way mirror,” she said. “Only us.” She pointed two fingers at her eyes and then pointed out the window at the boys in the playroom. “Safe. Now,” she continued, “we will follow rules soon, soon. Matka fix. I am old Polish woman, silly and gentle. We are all good faith.” 

The adults moved, tentatively, toward the large window. The adults knew it wasn’t appropriate for Matka to let them observe the boys in this way, and they appreciated her cover story: that it was an innocent accident. One of the men whispered, “She’s good,” to the woman beside him, who shushed him with a finger to her lips.

“Where, oh, where is door?” Matka rubbed the walls, pretending to look for the exit. “So hard for Matka in old home in ramshackle neighborhood.”

The prospective parents looked through the one-way mirror to watch the boys in the playroom. Boys read books, played board games, stacked colored building blocks. Three boys in athletic shorts bounced a basketball among themselves. At a table, one blond boy in an Orange Crush T-shirt put stuffed animals inside a plastic yellow school bus. The school bus had no roof, and the animals stuck out the top. He pushed the school bus back and forth on the white table. At another table, front and center in the room, sat a fuzzy orange monster boy in a navy-blue suit. A book was opened on the table, but he stared straight at the window. He had a thin smile and hopeful eyebrows. 

“It’s like he thinks it’s picture day at school,” said a man.

“Who is that?” asked a woman. 

“Haven’t you seen one before?” asked a man. “The special ones? We have one in Sylvan Glen.”

“Orange?”

“Brown.”

“They’re rare.”

“I’ve never seen one. Not up close anyway.”

“Can he see us?” asked another woman. “I think he can see us.”

“Matka Zula must be matka to all. That is cowboy lawman saying this many times to Matka Zula. There are many laws. But also many boys,” she continued, “many good boys!”

The prospective parents ignored the furry boy in the suit and turned their attention to the normal boys. There were boys with curly black hair, boys with buzz cuts, boys with two different kinds of shoes, boys with oversized T-shirts from charity 5K runs, boys with chapped lips and skinned knees, boys with runny noses, and boys with devilish glints. 

“He’s so darling,” said a woman, pointing at Fiho, the blond boy with the school bus of animals. 

“Isn’t he?” agreed another woman. 

“Cute kid,” said a man.

“Maddox Hathorne is non-profit,” announced Matka Zula. “We appreciate donations.” She opened a drawer in the side table. She placed white paper cups on the tabletop and set out black markers. “You make donation. Put in cup. Put your name. Leave on table. Everybody happy for future.” 

“I feel sorry for him,” said a man, nodding at the orange boy in the suit, who continued to summon bright eyes and force a grin. “He’s trying so hard.”

“He looks itchy,” said a man.

“You’d be itchy, too, with all that hair,” said a woman.

“Wait until swimsuit season,” joked the man. “I do have all that hair.”

Several couples laughed.

The three boys in black and yellow baggy shorts opened a trunk filled with costumes. They pulled out shiny capes and plastic masks. They took out a teddy-bear costume with a broken zipper. Elbrus, the boy in a backwards baseball cap, took out a rubbery hand. Red paint was splattered at the severed wrist to simulate blood. Elbrus elbowed Mark and snuck up behind Fiho.

Gumball sensed something. He scanned the room.

Fiho felt something on his shoulder. It was a bloody severed hand. He shrieked and flung the school bus into the air. The stuffed animals went flying.

Gumball darted toward the ruckus.

The three boys in baggy shorts were laughing.

Fiho fell out of his chair and scrambled under the tables. He knocked over a board game and a tower of blocks. Gumball held him and told him it was just a prank. Fiho’s fear turned to anger. Elbrus wagged the rubbery severed hand. Fiho charged.

The three boys reacted. Elbrus held Fiho at the wrists while Mark and Philliph held him at the ankles. They lifted him onto the table. Fiho wriggled and twisted. The three boys struggled to hold him. Fiho’s shirt got hiked up; his cargo shorts slipped down; and a blond stubby tail poked out.

Everyone froze. 

Gumball whispered, “No.”

The adults gasped. 

Matka Zula squinted. When she understood what she was seeing, her eyes went wide. She closed the curtains. 

“Boys and costumes,” she said, trying to laugh. “They love the costumes and scary things to wear.” She held her own wrist and shook her hand as if it were a severed hand. “Ahhh!” she laughed. She walked directly to the exit door and threw it wide open. “Watch your stepping down the stairs. Enjoy your Sunday. Matka will be in touches with you. Goodbye. Goodbye.”