​     For the first time, I decided to buy organic beef bones for my daughter’s phở. I stepped inside her favorite grocery store to scour the meat aisle for every kind: knuckles, necks, oxtails. I usually skipped oxtails since their price doubled at the Vietnamese market, but those had always been Annie’s favorite part of the dish, and this was the easiest way to bribe her into staying home with me after her latest hospital hold. My daughter needed the best batch to get better.

​

     Whole Foods was only fifteen minutes away, and as I walked through, it felt like an exotic island. I lost precious minutes staring at blindingly bright bags of chips and tall moms with flat abs pushing baby strollers. The nut butter machine growled monstrously. I was most caught off guard by how easily the aisle fit two carts side by side. At my local Vietnamese market, I dodged boxes of dried noodles while listening to the live fish tanks bubbling in the back. Constantly claustrophobic, but its busy warmth grounded me in a familiarity that I struggled to find with my daughter.

​

     After I secured the right bones, I zoomed through the store for the rest of the ingredients, only pausing to inspect the onions for crusty layers. I waged war against the self-checkout machine, drove home on 880, unlocked the pantry for the stockpot and knives, then turned on the stove. I did this all before 9 a.m.. My daughter stayed in her bedroom.​

​

     In the kitchen, I rinsed the bones until the water stopped bleeding, then parboiled them twice to get rid of every speck of scum. Once they were up to my standards, I threw the bones in the stockpot alongside garlic, ginger, and onion. I toasted spices on the side, inhaling their earthy aroma before releasing a breath that had been trapped in my throat all morning. Phở prep was exhausting but essential, the motions meditative. Chopping, rinsing, roasting. As the broth simmered, I relaxed in the living room to watch Winter Sonata, my favorite Korean drama.

​

     As I watched the female lead skip through a snowy field, lovingly adored by the male lead, I recalled my first time watching this show with my daughter. Annie had jumped up and down on the couch, begging me to buy that same wool coat the female lead wore.

​

     Little girls don’t need coats in San José, I had scoffed at her. But now that the female lead was the only warm smile in this house, I wanted that same joy to infect my daughter. Fast. I opened my laptop to browse online for a similar coat. Wool, beige, knee length,black buckle buttons. I considered asking Annie to come out for this overdue hunt, but remembered how the doctor had chastised me. I was not to bother Annie so much the first few days back home. Begrudgingly, I wrapped myself inside a throw blanket to continue my solo shopping.

​

     In between episodes of drunk confessions and dramatic gazes into each other’s eyeballs, people called. Annie’s father asked to stop by tomorrow. My son planned to drive down from Walnut Creek. I told them both “no.” I would take care of everything. She needed only me. If an in-law’s name popped up on Caller ID, I let it go to voicemail as one should always do, and listened to the same question: Why did Annie quit her nice job at the tech giant of the world? I didn’t know, to be honest. I just knew my daughter needed to rest, find peace in sleep and dreams.

​

     Five episodes and a sunset passed when the broth finished simmering. At the first sip, I smiled. It was sweet without extra sugar, the spices subtle. I added a spoonful of fish sauce for that savory kick and after another taste, I was confident this phở would make Annie smile, even if she wouldn’t let me in to see it. My daughter had barely left her room since returning from her latest seventy-two-hour hold. I doubted she would even open the door, let alone accept the bowl of phở. I still wanted to try.

​

     Hands trembling, I knocked on her door. I was afraid to wake Annie from what felt like an eternal slumber, but I also wanted her to hear me.

​

     “Con ơi,” I called her. “Are you up?”

​

     No response. I didn’t let that stop me, still hopeful she’d want to sit next to me at the dining table, slurping rice noodles in silence.

​

     “I made phở. Very yummy today,” I insisted. “I even bought everything from Whole Foods, your favorite.”

​

     Nothing again. I heard only the stock pot simmering. My breath thinned. Heart seized. Then the faint rustling of blankets and body. I sighed in relief; she was still breathing.

​

     I decided to change my approach. I walked back to the kitchen and prepared a small bowl, almost overflowing it with sliced raw beef, cilantro, and bean sprouts. The bowl was hot enough to burn my bare palms, but I gripped it tighter. I’d only let the bowl fall to shove food down my daughter’s throat.

​

     Thankfully, the door was unlocked when I elbowed it open. Annie did not move once I entered. She stayed in the same position I’d left her in the night before: long black hair splayed across the pillow, her entire body cocooned inside a faux mink blanket. Aside from the back of her head, I couldn’t see my daughter at all. I couldn’t tell if her eyes were open, if the wounds on her wrists were healing, if new ones had been made. But I heard her breathing. Smooth, steady, constant.

​

     I placed the bowl on her desk. “I put here, okay? Please eat, Annie.”

​

     For a moment, I studied the way my daughter decorated her whole life across her four walls. There were gold medals for track and field, the blue satin sash from UCLA, her first paycheck from every job. Annie taped up so many Polaroids too, big smiles in every single one. She used to do that for everything, everywhere: beaches with friends,​ Disneyland with her brother, school dances with handsome boys, hikes with her father, a sunflower field with me. It had been a long time since I’d seen this girl. I wondered where she went.

​

     I walked over to Annie’s bed, kissed the top of her head, then told her goodnight. She said nothing back. No worries. I still had her after another Day One home. Those days, I prayed for nothing else.

​

⎯

​

     Depression confused me. I didn’t know the Vietnamese word for it. At least, I wasn’t taught one before I escaped the war. There was a translator at every doctor visit, but they also lacked the right words, so the only thing I understood was that Annie gets headaches from being sad. When my son Peter visited, he was even worse with Vietnamese, so he painted a picture with words. A dark cloud over your head every second. Cuffs around your wrists, ankles, neck. Drowning. He spoke like a poet despite being a dentist.

​

     I wondered if my son knew people like Annie, maybe suffered the same ache under my own roof. The possibility had me nibbling on my nails. Peter had always been harder to read. Diligent his entire life, he had perfected an easy smile that reached the corners of his eyes, assuring the world that everything would be great. Just the way his father and I prayed he would be. It made me more worried that he could have been struggling through something at that moment, but at least he had a wife and kid to endure it for. Right then, Annie only had me.

​

     “But why won’t she eat?” I pestered him one time too many. “Because she’s sad? How sad is that sad?”

​

     “It’s more than being sad, Mẹ. It’s like her thoughts are so strong, they paralyze her whole body.”

​

     “What does ‘paralyze’ mean? Say it in Vietnamese.”

​

     Peter let out a frustrated sigh as his explanation weakened to fragments. Frozen limbs. Chest heavy. Intense headaches. Words clogged up his jaw. It was so hard to understand this messy mash of two languages, despite both sharing a similar alphabet.

​​

     Neither fully grasped the other.

​

     I balled my fists, ashamed at how I dumped this burden on him.

​

     For the entire afternoon, Peter stayed with Annie in her room. I didn’t hear much conversation. Just Peter talking about his life, likely showing pictures of his family. I learned more about my son from eavesdropping in the hallway than I had during our Sunday phone calls. His wife Emily had started knitting teddy bears. His son Max thought the wagon walker was a real train. Peter was training for a marathon. He didn’t press Annie to say anything. His voice was gentle and warm, assuring me more than Annie.

​

     Eventually, video game noises pulsed from Annie’s room. I recognized them from a battle game where the bombs wear cute orange shoes and spells explode with blue sparks. It used to annoy me how they obsessed over it as children, their eyeballs glued to the screen and thumbs latched to the game controller pads. But right then, I’d never been so grateful to hear my children beat up cartoon characters.

​

     Before Peter drove back to the East Bay, I asked how it had gone. Same way it always went, he reported. Annie barely spoke, just motioned with her head to “yes/no” questions. He’d beat her at Super Smash Bros. 3–2. Peter yanked out her smile once he showed cute videos of his son. The only thing Annie said to her brother was “Goodnight.” Jealousy brewed inside me; that was more than I got her first day home.

​

     “She’ll be fine,” Peter insisted, hesitation creeping through his smile. I wished it was a promise. Something absolute for me to embrace with my own bare hands.

​

⎯

​

     Annie was always a good child. Not perfect, but not terrible. I liked to think it was because her father and I didn’t pressure her like our relatives did to their children.​ 

 

     When Annie admitted to hating piano lessons in sixth grade, we let her stop with minimal bickering. On school nights, she often returned home by her 9 p.m. curfew and texted ahead of time if she was late. She got straight As and scored 1500 on the SAT without extra tutoring.

​

     When Stanford rejected her, we wanted to treat Annie to a nice dinner out. She protested at first. The excuses spiraled to high-pitch whines: too old to be eating outwith parents, too sad to leave her room, too angry at the world as one was at seventeen. Somehow, she still stomped toward the car.

​

     It was a generic sushi buffet at Eastridge Mall, nothing fancy. The chairs were plasticky with worn-down cushions, the seafood soup was a congealed mush of imitation crab and defrosted peas, and the gold wall ornaments were peeling. The food was far from fancy, yet we devoured so many plates. Sushi rolls drenched in spicy mayo sauce, baked cheesy mussels, soggy french fries—so much. Eating had always been the quickest way to cure sorrow, to nourish joy when we couldn’t find it elsewhere. I was confident it would heal my daughter, no matter what.

​

     By her last bite, Annie didn’t seem so sad about Stanford. Still sad, but there was a brief flicker of relief when she bit into her last egg tart. Not yet acceptance, far from joy. We didn’t leave the mall right away. We browsed discounted sweaters at JCPenney, bought sugarcane juice at the food court, and winced at designer perfumes’ powdery scents. During the car ride home, Annie looked so lovely gazing at the starry sky, not crying, with the faintest smile as she dozed in the backseat. She was only seventeen, so easy to cheer up then. Such a good appetite.

​

⎯

​

     Annie didn’t eat real food the first few days. When I retrieved her phở the morning after, the bowl was untouched, cold. Lean beef slices had overcooked, disintegrating into a muddy foam, leaving a foul stench of rejection in her room. Standing before the trash can, my grip around the bowl tightened, refusing to dump its content and face the truth. My food wasn’t good enough for her. Not yet.

​

     I knew Annie nibbled on something. I’d seen the chocolate bar wrappers and chip bags scattered on her floor, probably a secret stash from her teenage years. It was the bare minimum, but it told me she still wanted to wake up the next day, every day. So far. Eventually, I woke up to clean bowls in the sink. Not a single grain of rice left behind, no mushy leftovers in the trash. Not enough, but something. Success. Hope bubbled inside me. This was more proof that Annie truly wanted to heal, to live the way I prayed for her to live.

​

     The coat arrived a week later. It wasn’t an exact copy from Winter Sonata, but close enough. A classic tan wool, perfect for the fall weather. I tried it on just for fun, but it was too long on me. The bottom hem floated around my ankles while the shoulder seams fell to my biceps, but it was warm and cozy, an overdue hug. In the mirror, I looked like a child playing dress-up. On my daughter, it would stop at her knees, and she would look like the elegant, promising young woman I dreamed of her becoming.

​

     “Annie.” I knocked on her door, more confident this time. “I got a coat for you. Please try it out.”

​

     Silence again. No response. Not even the light was on in her room.

​

     “It’s like the one from Winter Sonata, remember?” I tried again. “J.Crew Factory had a sale. Very good deal.”

​

     Here it was again, another rejection. Once again, I didn’t know how Annie felt. I couldn’t see her face. Oh, how I wanted to see her again. Even if she was crying or cold to me. Only a door stood between us, but I’d missed her so much. At the possibility of never seeing her again, my throat clenched.

​

     Defeated, I tucked the coat back into its packaging, protecting it until Annie was ready to be adorned. On that day, I hope she would smile brighter than the stars.

​

     Back in the kitchen, I heated up a taiyaki in the toaster oven. It was easy and yummy, the fish batter crispy while the red bean filling melted on my tongue. It was such a simple snack, yet it was the one thing that made me feel good. Not about myself; just good in general.

​

⎯

​

     I called in sick the first week. Work rarely noticed if I was gone, and I had plenty of PTO to use to take care of my daughter. But I knew it would never be enough if I wanted to defeat my daughter’s ailment for good. I needed a lifetime to banish this invisible monster, another to heal my heavy heart.

​

     I still didn’t know what exactly had happened with Annie’s job, whether she quit or was fired. Even if she opened up to me again, I’d be too afraid to ask. A high-paying job seemed irrelevant now, no longer something to boast about to relatives, to hold up as proof that she’d make a good wife. Now, it was just another culprit to her condition, a quiet reminder of how I had failed her as a mother.

​

     On Day Eight, Annie’s father pulled into the driveway. Even in his fifties, Duc remained an imposing figure—broad-shouldered, stoic face, always wearing leather jackets that weighed heavier than his fists. He brought croissants from a local French bakery, a gesture I hadn’t seen since he’d moved out. He used to bake them himself once a month, a skill he learned in his parents’ bakery back in Cần Thơ. The buttery scent softened the tension in my shoulders, and when I took my first bite into the flaky layers, it made me nostalgic for these simple comforts. These used to be enough to make things right. I was only halfway through a croissant when he began his usual argument. “You can’t stay home with her forever,” Duc insisted. “You can’t make her better.”

​

     “I have no choice. She needs to rest.”

​

     “But this is too much.” Pathetic, I knew Duc wanted to say. He hid it behind an exasperated sigh.

​

     I tried to explain depression the way our son once did to me, but I failed, as expected. There were no words that could make Annie’s father, or even myself, truly understand why such deep sadness had chained our daughter to her bed, leaving her paralyzed as her mind waged confusing battles. The only image I could offer was of an invisible demon that seemed to strangle her each night—perhaps one she had unknowingly​ created, even as a child under our roof. I could feel its grip too, its unseen tentacles wrapping relentlessly around my own ribs.

​

     Duc scoffed at my wild imagination, just as he had done throughout our childhood in Vietnam and our marriage in America.

​

     “Babying Annie won’t cure her,” he argued, his voice firm. “She needs to work to get better.”

​

     He didn’t spare me a second to protest before he barged into Annie’s room.

​

     “Get up,” he commanded, fists clenched. “Get up, con,” he repeated, louder this time. “You’re not a child anymore.” His voice filled the room, clashing against our daughter’s silence. “You can’t depend on others forever. Are you trying to hurt your mother?”

​

     That last question cut deep, like it was aimed at me, too. Before I could think, I pounced on his chest. "Stop," I pleaded, my voice cracking. "Let Annie rest. She’s suffered enough."

​

     His frustration switched back to me. “Why can’t you care about yourself for once?”

​

     His words spilled with a mix of anger and desperation, his voice softer but sharp. “Why give up everything for our grown daughter to do nothing?”

​

     At his words, I felt my entire body stiffen. I was desperate to defend myself, but tears clogged my throat, choking me. The truth, the one I was too afraid to admit, was that I knew exactly why. I just couldn’t say it aloud. How terrifying it would be to confess, “because I’m her mother,” and know it wasn’t enough to heal her. The worst part was witnessing Duc’s emotions dissolve, a single tear rolling down his cheek. I wondered if he’d just confronted a similar realization.

​

     He left without saying goodbye. He gave me no time to ask how he was, what else he was holding back behind clenched teeth. He walked straight to his secondhand Lexus and drove off, not once looking back. As usual, it was just me and Annie again in the cold, quiet house. I wondered if he was right—did Annie want to hurt me?

​

     That thought had haunted me ever since her first attempt. Did my daughter hate me so much she wanted to disappear from this world? Didn’t she know how agony seized my lungs every time that terrible image crept into my mind? What had I done to push her into this deep grave called depression?

​

     The question gnawed at me and refused to let me sleep that night. I searched and replayed every crime I’d committed against her. At some point, those memories mutated into my worst nightmare: her cold body, cracked lips, still chest. Eyes closed forever. And then, I watched the fire swallow her body and abandon her ashes. Even in that dreamscape, grief dragged me down to my knees, wailing through my bones.

​

⎯

​

     Yelling was caring. Duc and I learned that growing up in Vietnam. We didn’t think it was right or wrong. We never questioned if our parents raised us right or wrong either. When something was all you knew, it became all you did.

​

     A year into her first promotion, Annie stopped picking up our calls. On the rare occasion she replied through text, her messages were short and bitter. Too tired to drive home, no time to finish presentations, too busy for a Hawaii trip with Peter’s family, no energy to talk over the phone. When we did visit her apartment in the city, we pinched our noses at the takeout boxes erupting from her trash can. “No way she’s eating well,” Annie’s father grumbled during the car ride back home.

​

     The following week, Duc cooked a week’s worth of grilled catfish, a favorite of Annie’s, eager to personally deliver it to her. He returned home from 99 Ranch with three catfishes, their mouths agape and eyeballs bleeding out of the plastic bag. He marinated them in a lemongrass-ginger mixture, seared them individually on our backyard grill, then wrapped them in foil. The smell was heavenly and homey, strengthened by a father’s devotion to his daughter.

​

     Proud of his work, Duc snapped a photo and texted her: made cá nướng for you. Will be at your apartment in an hour. That was the first time Annie instantly called back. Before Duc could greet her with a quick “hello,” she seethed “no.” Just one word, in a tone she hadn’t used since she was four feet tall. That one word was enough to kill her father’s bright smile. He complained how he’d spent hours cooking for her, but Annie told him not to waste time driving up so late at night. Those two could be so combative when they wanted to. Duc called her hypocritical for attacking his driving skills when she’d gotten three tickets last year. She shot back with how too much fish would stink up her fridge. He claimed her place already reeked. She declared he would be banned from her building. One was ungrateful and the other was so stubborn.

​

     As their shouts clashed—Annie’s crackling through the speaker, her father’s booming in the living room—I lost track of what they were fighting for. All I could hear was a silly war of attrition, a love lost in translation.

​

     This wasn’t abnormal. In Vietnamese, to love and suffer share the same word:

Thương.

​

⎯

​

     It was hard getting Annie out of her room. Some days I never heard her door creak, making me worry that her body had already withered in silence. But I knew she came out. Some nights, I heard her footsteps in the hallway, tip-tapping to the bathroom. It wasn’t ideal, but at that point I was just glad she didn’t wet the bed out of laziness. Sometimes, the body still functions when the mind fails.

​

     At some point, I realized Annie didn’t just languish on her bed. I occasionally heard video game noises when I passed her door, zappy spells and clashing swords. I didn’t dare step inside to confirm, else it disturbed her peace. The fact that Annie did anything awake was another small win.

​

     Annie finally came out the night of Day Nine. She was a mess, as expected. Hair unwashed, grease and dandruff piling up on her scalp. Face riddled with pimples. Back slumped beneath her gray hoodie, barely standing on two feet. Her skin so, so pale. She asked where I’d put her old tennis shoes.

​

     “I’m going for a run,” Annie said, her voice barely above a croak.

​

     I glanced at the clock: 10:32 p.m. It was so dark outside, a black shroud. My entire body seized. How could she abandon me so soon for the eerie outside?

​

     “Can I come with you?” I was no runner; I just wanted to go wherever she went. Even if my legs gave up.

​

     “You can’t keep up.” Her voice was stern and solid, more certain about this rejection.

​

     She was testing me, unintentional or not. I wondered if she still needed alone time. A different solitude. One where she ran in the crisp air, underneath the stars. Anything to convince her life could be good again. The doctors warned me against leaving her truly alone, unless I wanted to discover new bruises and cuts across her body.

​

     “Come back soon.” Please.

​

     The second Annie closed the front door, my stomach twisted in a knot. I felt guilty​ rebelling against the doctor’s orders by letting her out in the wild. Alone, in the dark, where I couldn’t follow her so easily. How reckless of me. But I found myself praying, trusting Annie to always come back to me. She had to.

​

     My hands trembled as I clasped them together, encasing my gold Buddha necklace in my grip. Now I understood why people put Airtags on dogs and children. You needed to know wherever they were to function normally.

​

     Prayer was never enough, so I searched for ice cream in the fridge. It was a coconut mango flavor from a generic brand my family despised, but I like it. Not too sweet, not overwhelming. Just the right texture with some icy bits. It soothed the ache away, momentarily.

​​

     Annie only ran a mile, shorter than expected. Palms on her knees, she returned a sweaty mess: shirt drenched, forehead glistening, breaths heavy. Alive.

​

     I had so many questions to ask they threatened to burst through my teeth. Tell me what’s going on. What did I do wrong? How can I make the world better? Instead, I settled on, “How was your run?”

​

     “Good,” she said, quiet, nodding. “Better.”

​

     I didn’t press further. Truth or not, I chose to believe my daughter.

​

⎯

​

     Gradually, Annie started eating more. She finished all the soups and congees I made, rarely leaving a grain of rice behind. Some evenings, she even walked a few blocks to the grocery store for giant bags of chips. She drank so much coffee that she went through a bag of beans each week, even though she rarely woke up early or went out. I didn’t understand why she needed so much caffeine—maybe it was the woody aroma she liked, or the bitterness. Even as a child, she’d preferred her coffee black, never wanting the sweetened Vietnamese version I tried to give her.

​

     Whenever I picked up her plates, I usually found her cocooned in blankets, either sleeping or ignoring me. I suspected she did this on purpose. But one day, I caught her watching a YouTube video of someone traveling through Japan. The traveler stopped by a street stall selling melon bread, and seeing that golden-brown crust brought back my own memory of biting into it: sweet, warm, comforting. Without thinking, I blurted out, “I can make that.”

 

     From her bed, Annie threw me a suspicious look.

​

     “I should have most ingredients,” I insisted. “Your father taught me how to bake.”

​

     “Mẹ, you don’t bake.”

​

     Another rejection. So finite, like the wrinkles around our eyes.

​

     “Let me try.”

​

     It felt strange to suddenly be so fixated on baking bread, but I couldn’t help myself. For the first time since Annie came home, I’d found a small, achievable way to try something new. Not just for her, but myself. I followed a YouTube recipe, reassured by its simplicity. Let the dough rise slowly in a warm, cozy spot, not too much heat. Proof it in the oven with just the light on, a bowl of steaming water on the bottom tray. Bake for fifteen minutes, then rest for another fifteen to achieve its ideal texture.

​

     As I pulled the tray of melon bread from the hot oven, its sweet aroma filled the kitchen, luring Annie out. She hovered over the counter, her nose twitching as she took a quick sniff. Curiosity flickered in between me and the bread, but she did not reach for one. I saw the hesitation in her fidgety crossed arms, then felt it spread through my own arms. The recipe said the bread needed extra rest time to be perfect, and I’d just taken it out.

​

     My impatience won out. “Take the first bite.”

​

     She obliged, slowly bringing a piece to her mouth. A quiet nod followed. "Not bad," she murmured, nibbling again.

​

     We sat there, sharing the bread in silence. But it wasn’t right—the biscuit crust was too hard, slightly burnt, and the inside lacked fluffiness. Too sweet for her, I knew right away. With every bite, the weight of my mess-up sunk in my chest like a boulder.

​

     Annie took another bite, then another. With each one, I saw her face twist between relief and regret. Her chewing slowed, savoring the taste, until she stopped, quivering, overcome by an emotion too heavy to contain.

​

     “Sorry, Mẹ,” she whispered.

​

     I didn’t need her to say more. I knew what she meant. For being a burden. For wasting my time and effort. For not being enough. I could see it in her eyes, the way tears brimmed at the edges.

​

     “Sorry, Mẹ,” she repeated, her voice cracking as if she were falling, slipping into that dark place again.

​

     My instinct was to grab a tissue, to wipe those tears away before they ruined her face. Instead, I pulled her close and kissed her forehead. “It’s okay.”

​

     Annie trembled in my arms, her tears soaking through my sleeves. “It’s okay,” I told

her. It’ll be okay, I prayed. She mumbled all the ways she’d failed—being a helpless baby

adult, not showering, smelling bad. But this time, I held my daughter as she unraveled,

not rushing her to heal, grateful she was in my arms.

​