Huina Zhang
The Coat on the Rack
My five-year-old daughter clutched the hem of my nightgown, her voice as thin as a thread. “Mom, there’s a ghost by my bed.” She curled under the blanket, trembling.
Following her gaze, I looked over—on the beech rack by the window, my camel-colored trench coat hung in the glow of the intertwined moonlight and streetlights. The night breeze slipped in through the half-opened gauze window, and the khaki fabric fluttered as if stirred by an invisible hand, making the coat appear distorted and elongated in the night. As the breeze blew, the standing collar wobbled askew, resembling a head suddenly turning.
Her small hand tightened around my wrist. “It just… bared its fangs at me…” Her tearful voice had barely faded when a motorcycle roared downstairs, its exhaust pipe’s blast tearing through the night and echoing along the street, much like the wailing of wandering spirits.
A vivid memory from my childhood pierced through the moment, blurring the bedroom before me:
An eight-year-old me rolled off the wooden bed, my bare feet touching the cement floor. In the living room, the television was playing a Hong Kong drama. “Mom, there’s a monster in my wardrobe…”
Without taking her eyes off the screen, she replied, “Go to bed!”
I pointed to the room, dirt from playing in the mud that afternoon still under my fingernails. “But… that monster… it was gnawing on my pajama pants.”
“You’re asking for a beating!” She turned, eyes narrowing under the pale fluorescent light. “If you keep this up, I’ll hit you with a hanger!”
Tears welled up as I retreated to my room, cocooning myself in the blanket, leaving no gaps, sweating beneath the covers.
In that childhood dominated by monsters, even the streetlights took the shape of teeth.
Now, looking at my daughter, I puffed up my cheeks, pressed my tongue against the roof of my mouth, and murmured a string of indistinct “spells”: “Abraca—tabra—hoo!” I drew a few wobbly circles above her head with my fingers. “Look, I’ve cast the most powerful protection spell.” Taking down the trench coat, I added, “This is a magic cloak. When monsters come—” I flicked my wrist, making the coat’s hem flare, “it will transform into—”
“An eagle!” my daughter exclaimed.
“Yes, an eagle that flaps its wings, sweeping all the bad things into the Pearl River!”
The trench coat danced in my hands like a giant bird spreading its wings. My daughter giggled as I wrapped it around her.
On that night, as the streetlamp cast the trench coat into a ghostly figure, we invented a new game—each time the “ghost” creaked, we would chant our spell, imagining those fanged monsters being swept away into the gurgling depths of the sewer.