Yehuda Leib’s mother, Shulamis, woke before dawn, dragging her clacking bones up from the warm bed hours before it was reasonable. It was unpleasant, but if she wanted a chance of collecting enough odd jobs to afford a bit of food for the evening, she would have to start early.

Her back ached.

Tupik was leaning forward in anticipation this morning, silent and still in the gloaming. The gray clapboard houses huddled over the muddy streets as if to steal the rising steam of the passing people’s breath, and at the outskirts of town, the tall pines seemed to bend inward over the roofs as if to better see what might transpire.

Perhaps it was the growing cold, perhaps the thick gray slab of cloud covering over the sky, but whatever the cause, everything felt weighted down—coiled.

Waiting.

In the corner of the little front room, Shulamis’s son, Yehuda Leib, pretended to sleep in a twisting of sheets.

She glanced down at the pan by the cooling embers of the fire.

Half a potato. This was all the food left in the house. Even the saltcellar was empty.

With a sigh, stomach moaning, Shulamis rose from the hearth, took Yehuda Leib’s warm red scarf from the chair by the door, and tucked it into the crook of his arm. She’d made the scarf with her own two hands, stitch by stitch, the thread passing between her ruddy, cold-stiffened fingers night after night until finally it was done.

Truth be told, there was as much worry as wool in it.

“You’ll be good today?” she said.

“Yes,” said Yehuda Leib flatly, his eyelids clamped shut, as if he still might manage to convince her that he was sleeping.

“You won’t make any trouble?”

“It’s never me who makes the trouble, Mama.”

Shulamis frowned, as if she just might believe this. “Of course not.” And then, crossing to the door, “There’s a little potato left in the pan,” and, halfway through the door, “Don’t forget your scarf.”

It was only moments later, the sound of Shulamis’s squelching feet fading down the muddy road, that the front door yawned open again to admit a bright-eyed boy into the morning.

A boy with no red scarf.

It was itchy. And it choked him.

Yehuda Leib couldn’t stand being constrained.

The sun was rising.