I watch my husband’s back as he disappears into the whiteness of the horizon. My two children stand next to me. Every year, twice a year, he goes to his trapper huts. He packs the remainder of his supplies, kisses me and the kids goodbye and leaves, into the snow, into the many hours of darkness, into oblivion.

We watch him go until he vanishes or until it’s too cold to stand outside anymore. This time the cold gets to me faster than it takes him to disappear. I make the kids go inside. I ask them to tidy their room. They go to their room and soon I hear the sound of them playing, nicely for now. I start tidying the kitchen from the morning’s breakfast and then I remember I didn’t finish hanging the laundry before he left. I hang sheets, towels and the kids’ clothes in our tiny living room.

I see he’s left some clothes for me to fix. I bring them to the kitchen table and get to work. I’ve tried to teach him how to sew but he ends up bringing back all his ruined clothes at the end of the season. While I fix them, I think about how he made each hole or tear. Which movement or movements caused stress on the fabric at that seam strong enough to break it. I think about him often while he’s away. I wonder what he’s doing. Is he resetting the traps right now? Has he had a good or bad haul? Are his feet cold?

I wonder if he thinks about what I’m doing. I feed the kids, clean the kids, clean the house, fix the clothes, go to the shop, visit my mother, his mother, his sister. When the weather’s nice I let the kids play in the snow. When it’s not nice, we play inside, cards or board games, or I make them study when I need to do be doing other things.

I finish the sock I was working on and put the rest of the clothes away for later. I finish tidying the kitchen. Once I finish putting the dishes away I realize I need to start preparing dinner already. I look to see what needs to be eaten, what can be reused, repurposed into a nutritious but edible meal. Cooking will at least make the kitchen warmer. I start peeling some potatoes. My back starts to hurt, all the surfaces in the kitchen are too low. I can’t stand and I can’t sit to make the washing, chopping, stirring any easier. Once dinner is in the oven, I start to clean up again.

I feel a tug on my shirt, I look down and it’s our youngest.

‘Mamma, I’m hungry.’

I put down the pot I’m scrubbing and make her a quick snack. We had a late breakfast – they wanted to wait for their father and he had a few last things to gather – so I make her a small sandwich since dinner won’t be ready for a few hours. She sits at the table smiling at me and I smile back.

‘Mamma, when’s Daddy coming back?’

She asks this every day he’s away. I had needed a way to survive that question.

‘Well,’ I say ‘let’s go look.’

She grabs my hand and we walk into the cold living room and look at the special calendar we made together. A piece of fabric with cut-outs of numbers starting from today and descending until he comes back. There are different symbols for the birthdays and holidays he will miss. I lift her up and she takes one day down. One day done, many still to go. I smile at her, even though when I go to the next town over she never asks her grandmother when I’m coming back.

I don’t go away often, just once or twice a year to sell my embroidery. I don’t stay long, usually a night or two, depending on the weather. I look forward to it but in a way that if I look forward to it too much, I’ll be disappointed. I used to get offended when my husband said he looked forward to the trapping season. Did he not want to spend the season with me, with his kids? But now I understand why he looks forward to it, the same way I look forward to leaving the kids with my mother and going to sell my embroidery. It’s an escape, and for that short amount of time, all I need to do is take care of myself.

But I feel guilty when I think that way.

I set the table and call the children in. We eat dinner.

‘Dad will come back with a lot of sables this year,’ my son says, walking into the room. ‘Because he’s a big strong man.’

‘Yes he is,’ I reply, ‘but he got that way by eating up all of his dinner, so you need to too.’

‘I’m going to do a drawing for Daddy when he comes back,’ says my daughter.

‘That’s great, what kind of drawing?’

‘Ummm,’ she stops eating while she thinks. ‘I’m not sure yet.’

When he comes back I make his favorite food, I make him take a bath, I take the kids away when he’s tired. I do all of that and yet I can see in his eyes that he’s still in his hut. This is around the time when I find myself not liking him being back, when I start to feel cold towards him, when I start to get jealous and annoyed. I’m ashamed of it and try to hide it, I tell myself he doesn’t notice but I know he does, he just deals with it in his quiet way. I don’t like being like that, I know why I behave like that and every year when I feel it approaching, I tell myself I won’t be like that, but it grows in me like a fire.

‘Bath time,’ I say, feeling more unpopular than when we run out of chocolate.

‘Nooo.’

‘Yes,’ I say.

‘But Dad never takes a bath.’

‘That’s not true, he does,’ I say to the kids. But I have to force him to take one as well.

I put the last of the special soap in the bath to make it more enticing. It was a present, a relic from when the furs were worth more money. The kids splash around and make a mess. Once they’re out of the tub, I start to clean up. I realize the bathroom needs a much more thorough cleaning but the children are already clothed and starting to gain more energy. I need to calm them down.

I turn the heater on in the living room and make the children settle down in their fuzzy pajamas and fluffy blankets and pillows and read to them.

‘Mamma, read the one about the bear,’ says my daughter.

‘Yeah and make it so that Dad comes face to face with the bear and he’s scared but then he gets his gun and shoots it in the face.’

‘He only shoots if –’

‘I know!’ my son complains. ‘He only shoots if he’s in danger.’

I read the story. The children know all the books we have by heart and outgrew them a long time ago, so at some point I began to improvise. At first they didn’t notice. Now they’ve caught on but they still encourage me to make them up.

I end the story right as they’re tired but not too tired to get to their beds. I pride myself in recognizing this and timing it perfectly. They march in a sleepy parade to their beds. I tuck them in and close the door, leaving a slim crack open. I clean up the dishes from dinner quietly.

Finally I have time to myself but it’s late and I’m tired. I sit at the kitchen table, embroidering. I do it so automatically that I can do it even when I’m half asleep. We need the money. I can only get so much by bartering and trading these days and the trapping depends on the weather. We grow things in the summer and store whatever we can but some things just need to be bought.

I look out the window and it’s snowing again. I hope he’s gotten to the hut safely. He should be there by now.

I put my embroidery down to let my hands rest a moment. They are usually cracked and dry from the cold and the constant exposure to bath water, dish water, laundry water, but now they hurt. They stay almost claw-like, stuck as if I’m still embroidering even though my needle and thread sit on the table.

I think about how different my days would be if I was a trapper. I’d rise before dawn, feed myself and my dog, check all my traps, reset traps, then go back to the hut and read or maybe write a poem but always, always watch the sun rise and set. I know trappers’ lives are hard, there’s the bears, the weather, cave-ins of the hut from snow or trees, fires to start, food you hope doesn’t go bad, let alone if you become injured or sick, but there is a lot of time for thought. Everything is reduced to basic survival and once that’s taken care of, the time is yours and only yours.

I wash my face and brush my teeth and get into the cold empty bed. Maybe tomorrow I will try to visit my friend, but tomorrow the kids need to do their homework, I have to check if my mother-in-law needs more medicine and the bathroom calls to me to be cleaned. I won’t be able to focus on anything else.

I wake up and the kids of course are awake before me. I start to prepare their breakfast. As I’m stirring the oatmeal, a tin from the shelf falls and lands right on my big toe. My house slipper softens the blow somewhat, but I get so angry that for a second I swear I see red, I’m about to smash the pot of oatmeal, the plates set on the table, the food on the shelves, but I don’t want the kids to come running and I don’t want to have to clean up the mess.

Instead I try and hold back the tears and the lump in my throat and stare out the window at the endless snow and I start to think Why me? Why this place? Why? Why? Why? I take a few deep breaths and tell the children their breakfast is ready. As they eat and chatter away, I ignore them. I don’t mean to but I can’t help it. I’m formulating a plan. I don’t even realize this at first. The children start to sense that I’m no longer listening to them.

‘Mamma, Mamma.’

‘Do you want to go on an adventure?’ I ask.

The both of them look shocked for a moment.

‘What kind of adventure?’ asks my son, thinking it might lead to a doctor’s appointment.

‘To Grandma’s, for the weekend. And I’ll ask her to make her special hot chocolate.’

I ask them to pack their things, and they do – part excited, part scared. I’m not supposed to be the fun one. Their father is always the one with surprises, usually dead things or sharp things. They put on their boots and coats and I put on mine and we walk the short distance, in the steady snow and strong winds, to Grandma’s. She looks shocked but happy about this surprise visit. She sits the children down in front of the fire and follows me into the kitchen. I take down the children’s favorite mugs from the cupboard and turn around to face her.

‘Ma,’ I say, taking a deep breath, ‘I need your help.’

She looks me in the eyes and without hesitation says, ‘Of course. What do you need?’

A weight has been taken off my shoulders as I try to run back to the house in the snow, by myself, with time stretching out ahead of me. My coat is undone but the cold and wet snow doesn’t feel like such a battle, it feels like a liberation, being so immersed in the elements.

As soon as I get home I throw off my wet outer clothes by the door and get right to work in my underclothes. I pull out all of the fabric I’ve amassed over the years, from making alterations to the children’s or my husband’s clothes, pieces I’ve picked up from other people or bought myself.

I work through the night, hardly pausing to eat. I only stop when the pain in my hands is too much to continue, then I take a nap. By the end of two full hard days of work, I’ve got three calendars, similar to the one hanging in the living room. I don’t have much time to admire my work. I wrap one up and put it in a bag where I also put essential supplies. Early in the morning, I bundle myself up as completely as possible and go to our neighbor. Her husband is also away at his hut but there is a sleigh and her reindeer. It will take longer but this is my only option.

I set out following the set of directions I have had memorized for many years. Once I get away from the village, I am amazed by the total enveloping whiteness. It’s so quiet and still. I know I shouldn’t believe in a total pristine landscape, danger lurks everywhere, and so I have a shotgun strung across my shoulder just in case. The cold isn’t as bad as I thought, but maybe I’m already numb to it, too numb to feel anything because my mind is taking up all the heat. I’m excited. I keep going over the plan in my head. It’s perfect. I’ll make more of these calendars and sell them to tourists in town during the summer, along with my embroidery. I’ll go further and visit more towns and maybe even sell calendars to families like mine. While I work on my craft and am away earning more money for our family, my husband will be back from the hut and he will stay and look after the children, and clean and cook and do laundry.

Night comes and I am still wide awake, my body is stiff from having not changed position in hours but I need to press on. My mother can only handle looking after the children for so long and then my sister-in-law can only take them for a few more days, having her own children to look after.

Night is long but not as long as I think since my mind is racing. I see a few of the sun’s rays begin to emerge and my heart beats faster. The sunrise brings tears to my eyes and they begin to freeze before they have a chance to roll down my face. I wipe them away. I think I am near. I have a creeping fear, a fear that creeps like the sun’s rays, I try to shut it out and hope I didn’t come all this way for nothing. The sunlight won’t last for long and I want to be there before it’s dark again.

Soon I can see the hut in the distance. My husband is outside, chopping wood, he hears me coming before I even have to say a word. I feel the last of my energy and adrenaline ebbing away. I’m so weary, but blissfully happy. The lack of sleep is making my limbs heavy and my mind simple. I stop the sleigh right next to the hut and stumble off. He turns to me, too shocked to even speak my name. I clutch the fabric calendar in my hand and try to speak. No words come yet, but he sees in my eyes and understands what it means.

About Allie Moh

Allie Moh is NYC born and raised but has been a Londoner for 8 years and counting. She specializes in short stories after obtaining her MA in Creative Writing. She has been published in 3AM Magazine and Open Pen. She became a regular at Bodega Monthly, a reading series in Brooklyn, and would like to start a similar reading series in London. She is currently working on her debut collection of short stories and is an avid reader, film nerd, music lover and pretty damn good cook.

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