The weather turns overnight, humidity giving way to a deep, bone-cold chill. I don’t believe that a body can adapt to the cold, not in one lifetime. Over generations, maybe—the slow thickening of skin from grandmother to mother to daughter. That’s why, even though I was born and raised on American soil, I tell people that I am a creature of warmer climes.

But my mother says I am too comfortable here. When she drifted across the sea with my body curled tight in her belly, she never imagined that I would become her con gái Mỹ—her all-American girl. Má sees my pierced nose and how I press the side of my face against a friend’s corn silk head in photos. She sees my rapid-fire exchanges with waiters at restaurants, the way I order a sandwich without stumbling over the words, and she thinks—how easily she exists in this still strange land, my bé gái.

She doesn’t hear the men who shout at me on the street, calling me a China doll. She didn’t see my best friend in elementary school—a girl with nut brown hair so long that the tail of her braid reached the back of her knees—pull at the corners of her eyes and laugh, saying, “Look! I’m you.”

She doesn’t know that I am always, always cold.

—

I shiver in my cubicle, once again underdressed and underprepared for the cool air that blasts continuously from the vent above my desk.

I survive the morning by holding my face above a mug of coffee. My fingers are stiff. My polyester cardigan, which I bought because it was on sale and has a flattering neckline, feels as though it is made of onion paper.

The coat, therefore, is both a whim and a lifeline. I see it on display in a consignment store window as I speed-walk towards the corner deli. It’s not an attractive garment, this boxy, burnt orange knee-length coat with pockets large enough to hold legal pads. It won’t make me look cooler or sexier or even smarter.

But god, it looks warm.

I march into the store and purchase the coat without trying it on first. I forget about eating lunch. I pull the coat from its plastic bag as soon as I am back on the street and slip my arms into the wooly monstrosity.

The coat smells musty, like mothballs and sweat and the sandalwood incense that my grandmother used to light on holidays. The large wooden buttons feel tacky against my fingertips. The collar scrapes against my nape in a way that makes me feel both edgy and alive. No one says anything about my new coat when I get back to the office.

It isn’t until I return to my studio apartment that manages to feel both cluttered and temporary, that I see myself in the coat. This is unusual. I am a compulsive mirror checker, not out of narcissism, but because I need to know what others see when they look at me. I cannot shake the sense that my image shifts and distorts with each inhale and exhale.

When I found the coat, I forgot about my own image. I thought only of the shivering, soft animal inside of me that wanted to burrow in the yards of worn wool. But now curiosity and anxiety bubble up again, and I stride to the full-length mirror propped up against one bare wall, covering up a patch of discolored beige paint. I look in the mirror.

I see—

Not me.

The woman in the mirror winks and my scream fails to register in what should be my reflection.

Here is the thing the horror movies get right:

There is no greater terror than looking for yourself and finding someone entirely unfamiliar gazing back at you. Those eyes that are not yours, blinking wide and unreadable. Those flashing teeth whiter than you could ever bleach your own.

Here is the thing the horror movies get wrong:

There is relief in that moment, too.

—

I grew up on Má’s stories about the old country, about walking underneath banyan trees and feeling the tickle of long strands of hair on your arms and neck. They were melancholy ghosts, schoolgirls in white áo dài who’d died of heartbreak and shame. They were weak but beautiful.

But the woman in the mirror isn’t weak. She looks strong and ferocious, like she could tear out my throat with her teeth. She seems more flesh and blood than I will ever be. I could float away easily. I could walk out of my apartment on a quiet night and turn into a shadow.

I am already halfway there.

—

I am no longer in my teens, walking late to an English Club meeting or holding clammy hands with my first boyfriend. Back then, hiding behind overgrown bangs, I mumbled something about being Vietnamese American when people asked me, their eyes sharp as an inquisitive sparrow’s, where do you come from?

Now I know how to preempt the question with a mysterious twinkle in my eye and fantastical stories spun of heirloom silk.

Oh, my parents came from a small fishing village in the south of Vietnam. They lived in a raised hut with my Ông Bà. During monsoon season, my mother would take off her sandals and wade barefoot through the streets. The water was as warm as fresh blood. Small fish nibbled at the dry skin on her toes. Her feet became smooth and soft, scars and calluses fading into nothing.

There’s something shameful about self-exoticization, this oh me? I don’t belong here, not really. I should be on a beach in Southeast Asia, smelling of coconut and sun. It is an act, a game.

This is how you see me anyway, right? Right?

—

I tell no one about my ghost.

I keep the coat and wear it to work for a week straight.

“You look different,” Gemma, my manager, tells me on the third day.

She once told me that I needed to pitch my voice lower and stop touching my hair if I wanted to be taken seriously in the workplace. She made a point to clarify that she didn’t care about my voice or habits, but that our colleagues would. The men, mostly. “Is that a new coat? It’s very... unique.”

“It’s vintage,” I tell her, twirling a strand of hair between my fingers. “Do you like it?”

“Hmm,” Gemma says, sounding skeptical. “You probably won’t need it for much longer. We’re supposed to have a short winter this year.”

I wrap my coat around my body. The whisper of fabric against my skin is her voice, my secret ghost. She tells me to remain silent for now. Later, when Gemma is in a long meeting, I snip the buttons off her good work blazer and bury them in the soil of her ailing desk succulent. I imagine them turning to seeds and sprouting thick and ropey vines of navy blue wool. I picture them reaching out to strangle Gemma.

“Thank you,” I say to the face in the mirror when I go to wash the dirt off my hands. “I would have never thought of that myself.”

The eyes of my ghost flicker downwards, shy in the pleasure of being acknowledged.

—

Here is the beginning of a ghost story Má told me when I was a little girl: Once there was a Vietnamese woman whose husband left to fight in a faraway war. When she said goodbye to him, she was already pregnant with his child—a son no bigger than con ốc.

The woman was a good wife. She tended the hearth and raised her son. She washed their laundry in the river behind their home. At night, she told her son stories about her husband, the heroic soldier. Everything a boy could ever hope for in a father.

When the husband finally returned, his son was a child of four who spent his days chasing lizards through the tall grass. The husband fell to his knees when he saw the boy and said, “My dear boy, come and embrace your father.”

But his son stepped back and peered from behind the shadow of a tree. “You are not my father. My father only comes to see us at night.”

The boy’s words confirmed the ugly, poisonous fear that had wormed its way into his thoughts after all these years away from home. His wife was a deceitful whore. She’d taken a lover who came to visit every night, and worse yet, had let this other nameless man claim the husband’s son as his own flesh and blood.

He stalked into the house and found his wife preparing a simple dinner of rice and fried fish. He kicked the pan into the fire, his homecoming meal burning to ash. He struck his wife across the face and denounced her in front of their wailing child.

“But what has happened?” his wife begged on her knees. “Please tell me, why are you so angry? How have I failed you?”

He did not answer, knowing that his silence would be more punishment than any blow. The wife had waited, patient and filled with longing, for her husband’s return. She had dreamed of this day and now it had turned sour, like a piece of fruit left to rot in the midday sun. Stricken with grief, the woman ran to the river and threw herself weeping into the rushing water.

Later that evening, the husband attempted to care for his son, who only stared at him with the wet unblinking eyes of a cornered animal. He changed the child’s clothing. He fed him a bowl of watery rice porridge. And when the sky grew dark, the husband lit a kerosene lantern.

His son sat up, animated for the first time since watching his mother drown. He pointed his chubby finger to the wall where his father’s shadow now loomed.

“There is my father!” he said. “My mother tells me that he comes every night to watch me sleep. See? He would never leave me alone.”

It was only then that the husband understood his mistake. His wife had not betrayed him. Instead, she had spun a foolish tale out of a shadow to cover up for her husband’s absence, to create a father for a child who did not have one.

A good woman was dead, but her reputation was preserved.

Does that count as a happy ending?

—

When I was a child, I used to beg for a hamster. Not because I liked them better than cats or dogs, but because I wanted a pocket-sized friend to carry with me in secret. “They’re disgusting,” Má said, wrinkling her nose. “Vermin. We used to have big rats, bigger than cats. If you weren’t careful, they would creep into your house and eat your baby’s toes and fingers.”

Má came home from work with a painted crystal bird instead, so delicate and detailed that I was afraid to touch it. She placed it on top of my dresser next to the bubblegum pink jewelry box that held a mood ring, a tarnished friendship necklace, and a 24-karat infant-sized gold bangle that my grandparents had given me for my first birthday.

I knew from going through Má’s closet that this bangle was a miniature version of the heavy choker that a woman received as a traditional wedding gift, the braided metal sized to fit snugly around her throat.

“A pretty thing for a pretty girl,” Má said when she gave me the gift I did not want. Then she touched me on the head and left the room, leaving me with my baubles and my fragile, lifeless bird.

—

I try online dating.

My friends told me that I needed to create a profile, that everyone is on the apps these days. They said that I couldn’t expect to meet the man of my dreams at my favorite coffee shop or between rows of books at the library. When I scroll through my matches and messages on my phone, I am overwhelmed by the volume of single people in this city, each one reduced to a well-lit photo and a bullet point list of likes and dislikes.

You seem very nice, but I don’t think we’d be a good match. Good luck out there!

At first, this is how I respond to messages from people I am not interested in. I think that I am being polite, but then realize that I am only inviting further exchanges.

How can you say that when we’ve never met?

Come on baby, once you get a taste of me, I promise you’ll keep coming back for more.

You’re an ugly bitch anyway, I don’t know why I clicked on your profile in the first place.

I knew all Asian chicks were stuck-up gold diggers. Good luck finding some idiot to marry you for a green card.

I learn to not respond. This seems to provoke far less anger—a woman disappearing like nighttime mist rather than saying what she thinks.

I end up giving my phone number to one man, an English teacher at a local high school. He comments on the books I’ve listed in my profile and tells me funny stories about his students. I keep making excuses when he suggests meeting up, telling him that I am busy—with work, with my family, with a weekend trip to another city.

These are lies. In the evenings I sit cross-legged on the floor and read through his texts, which can be cryptically brief or rambling confessionals. I read back my own messages, polite and eager to please, and wonder what he sees in me.

When I look in the mirror, I see myself without the coat, a woman in shadow.

—

There was once a man that I wanted to marry, if only he had asked. I could have told him this—that I hoped for a lifetime by his side—but the thought of doing so never crossed my mind while we were together. I was frozen by my love, rendered mute and helpless.

He had kind eyes. He had hands that moved like a river, that spoke in gestures. He had a sense of humor that made me think of autumn, quick and crisp. Had, had, still has. Isn’t it strange how something that’s been buried inside the most tender part of your chest can live outside of your body, unaware and carefree?

I was never good at telling the man I loved that I needed him.

“Why do you have to say anything?” my mother said, after he left. “He should know. You do everything for him.”

And it was true.

I brushed my fingers through his hair as he slept. It was soft as a child’s, downy and sweet-smelling. I cut the tops off strawberries on summer nights, so that he could eat them without looking as we sat on the balcony in the dark. When we kissed, his lips were cold and tart with their juice. I rearranged his books by title, and then by author, and then by genre, waiting to see what he preferred.

But I rarely said the words and now I know that some people need words. He found my silence infuriating; he could not understand why I folded into myself, why I tried to become small and beautiful, a trinket that he could treasure.

“You don’t have any real opinions,” he said during that last week, the one he spent raging through our apartment while I sat silent on the corner of the bed. “God, I don’t even know who you are. I’m tired of it, tired of trying to decipher you.”

How could I tell him that this was my greatest fear—that he would peel back all the layers and find stale air, the absence of substance?

“He needed more than I could give, Má,” I said. My eyes stayed dry, my ribcage as hollow as a coffin. I have not cried in front of my mother since I was a child, and to this day I’ve never seen her shed a tear. “But that doesn’t matter now.”

“Mmm,” she hummed in agreement and pushed a plate of sliced fruit in front of me. She had peeled the apples and carefully removed all traces of pith from an orange. “Eat. You haven’t had enough.”

—

Sometimes I wonder about the woman in Má’s story, the one who preferred to die rather than face her husband’s displeasure.

What had her life been before her husband returned home from war and accused her of disloyalty? Had she ever resented the fact that she kept his unworn shirts clean for years, airing and washing them to dispel mildew? Did she look at her growing son and see her distant husband’s face? Did this fill her with joy or despair?

In Má’s version, the story ends with the woman becoming a tender, dutiful ghost. Even after death she continues to visit her husband and son at night. She cooks meals while they sleep. She sweeps the floors and mends the tears in their clothing. She cares for them when they cannot care for themselves.

It makes me think that some fates are worse than death.

—

I have just put on my coat and am getting ready to leave the office when the man I’ve been texting calls me. I would normally let it go to voicemail, but the tag of the coat bites into my neck, prodding me to answer.

“I know this is last minute, but you mentioned how you work downtown and I’m in the neighborhood. I can buy you a drink.”

I say yes before I can change my mind. I feel her with me as I walk out onto the street, making my way to a crowded wine bar several blocks away.

The man looks just like he did in his photos, handsome and confident. He stands up as I walk towards him.

“You’re prettier in person,” he tells me. “I always say that it’s better to be unphotogenic, because that way you don’t disappoint people when they meet you in real life.”

We order drinks. The man launches into an explanation of how he became a high school teacher. He talks like someone pulling a loose thread from a sweater: compulsive, distracted, unraveled. I watch his hands and sip on my gin and tonic.

“I taught English in Thailand for two years,” he says. “I didn’t know what I wanted to do after I graduated from college, so I knew it was important to see more of the world and broaden my perspective.”

He tells me about how he travelled throughout Southeast Asia, about how he spent months in Indonesia and Vietnam.

“Have you been back home?” he asks, and for one confused moment I flash to an image of the den in the house where I grew up, the old leather couch that my parents sat on as they watched Wheel of Fortune together before bed each evening. “To Vietnam. It’s one of my favorite places in the world. The people are so spiritual and generous.”

The coat is itchy against my arms, but I keep it on. I want to scratch my skin off. I don’t know whether I should blame the ancient fabric or my furious, relentless ghost.

“Spiritual, like we’re all Zen Buddhists or something?” The words slip out of my mouth before I can stop them.

The man stiffens and his voice grows chillier, offended. “I didn’t mean it like that,” he says. “It’s not fair when people take what you say and twist it—”

“I was just joking,” I say. I smile to show the man that I mean no harm. I use the smile I always use in these situations, apologetic and nonthreatening. A smile I’ve practiced in the mirror. “What I meant to say is that Vietnam was never my home. I was born here. I’ve never been back.”

The man seems mollified by this confession, and I sit back as he regales with his expertise. He says he thought that Sài Gòn was a little too westernized—though he calls it Ho Chi Minh City, a name that would make any Việt Kiều wince—and waxes poetic about the untouched villages he saw as he rode a motorcycle to Hà Nội. I shift in my seat, the coat chafing against my body.

“Uh huh,” I say. “That’s crazy. Wow.”

The words are like an invocation, spoken so often that I wonder if they will spirit me away from here, to another world altogether. When I tell the man that it’s getting late and I need to wake up early in the morning, he offers to walk me home. We go outside and stand behind the bar, in a dim alleyway that smells sweetly of garbage.

“You’re a really good listener,” the man says. “I’ve found that to be a rare trait. I would love to see you again.”

He leans in to kiss me, his mouth tasting of bitters. I sink into the embrace at first, lured by his human heat, and then I feel my ghost rising within me. She claws from within my chest. The hairs on my arms prickle inside the sleeves of my coat.

I bite down on the man’s lower lip—or perhaps she does, my ghost with her switchblade smile—and a few drops of warm, salty blood trickle from his mouth into mine. He lets out a shocked yelp and stumbles back.

“What the hell?” he yells, wiping at his face and staring at me as though I have transformed into a wild beast. Maybe I have. There isn’t a mirror around for me to check. “Are you fucking crazy?”

“Oh no,” I say and shoot him my usual smile. “I’m so sorry. I can be such a klutz.” Then I turn around and walk myself home. I do not fear the late hour or the dip in temperature. I can taste the man the whole way home, my bite stronger than his kiss.

—

When I walk into my apartment after the date, I check my reflection.

I see a woman bright-eyed and rumpled by the wind, her lips flushed as though she has just gorged on a carton of fresh strawberries. The tip of her tongue darts out to lick at her lower lip and I taste copper.

Where does my ghost end and I begin?

I don’t take off my coat. I am afraid that if I do, my question will be answered. Instead, I stand in front of the mirror and take my time looking at the woman in the mirror. She stares back with the same unwavering scrutiny.

I smile and she smiles back.

What would my mother think if I told her about my coat and my new friend? My childhood bedtime stories featured both good and bad spirits, and some that were neither and both. They were confused. Trapped. Hungry. Those were the ones you had to watch out for. Those were the ones that would swallow you whole.

—

If I had to write a new ending for the ghost in my mother’s story, it would go something like this:

The woman crawled out of the river in the middle of the night and came to her husband’s bed. She slit his throat from ear to ear with the same knife she used to clean fish for his meals. He gurgled out his last regrets as his wife stood over him, beautiful and more substantial than she had ever been in life. She did not look away as he had when she drowned in her sorrow, calling out his name.

She took her sleeping son into her arms, knowing the weight of the child that she had once carried in her body. Then she ran barefoot down the pathway to the river and jumped back into its depths, to the place where her real story began. As soon as they took their first gulp of water, the wronged woman and the innocent child transformed into two silver fish, their bright scales flashing in the moonlight as they slipped downstream— free, free, free.

—

I wrap myself in the coat and drink the cheap bottle of white wine that was meant for cooking chicken. I ignore the text from my friends who want to know how my date went. What could I say that would make them understand the ferocious surge of joy I felt upon being alone again, no longer held captive by someone else’s stories?

I crawl into bed with my coat on. The itching returns. I think I will have a rash by the morning, but I don’t care. Maybe this is the price of being consumed.

I turn off the lights and turn towards the mirror, waiting for my eyes to adjust to the darkness. Then I can see her lying on her side to face me. Maybe she is just like me, except her loneliness turns raw and angry like a spider’s bite.

Mine is an ocean, all salt and endless sky.

I can’t make out her expression in the shadows. This makes it easier to be here together, waiting for the sun or whatever comes next.

My neighbor’s dog lets out a staccato volley of barks, then goes quiet. A woman passing on the street either laughs or cries with rising and falling hysteria.

I do not go to the window. I do not look outside. I do not cover myself with my soft, worn comforter.

I am warm enough.

Teresa Pham-Carsillo is a Vietnamese American writer from the San Francisco Bay Area. After graduating with a BA in Creative Writing from the University of California, Davis, she became an office-bound marketer, stealing time in the early and late hours of the day to write short stories and poems. Teresa's fiction and poetry has been featured or is forthcoming in various publications, including: Poetry Magazine, Salt Hill Journal, The Minnesota Review, Passengers Journal, The Penn Review, and St. Katherine Review. She can be found online at www.teresaphamcarsillo.com.

Mwanel Pierre-Louis (Just Let Go, acrylic on wood panel) is an Artist based out of Miami, Florida. His work combines realism and abstraction in a narrative that draws from personal interactions and pop references. Mwanel’s paintings feature juxtapositions of fragmented experiences and a strong emphasis on the relationship between subject and color. Born in New York, from Haitian descent, he’s spent time living and absorbing the culture from New York, Miami and Los Angeles. Pierre-Louis attended New World School of the Arts’ high school program in Miami, Florida and Art Center College of Design’s illustration program in Pasadena, California. His clients include Starbucks, Fader Magazine, Adidas and Atlantic Records. Mwanel’s work has been exhibited in Scope Art Fair during Art Basel, Miami and Switzerland, as well as New York City. In 2019, Mwanel had his first solo show with Thinkspace Gallery in Los Angeles and continues to have more shows with galleries as Talon, Antler, Spoke Art and Nucleus Galleries.

This story was originally published in Salt Hill 46.