Lucy Zhang

Replacement

PUBLISHED IN FOLIO 2023: VOL. 38.

Hao played guzheng even though you could hardly make out any of the notes from vehicles rolling past or the local vendors touting their soy milk as the “freshest on the street.” Still, I liked to watch Hao pluck and strum the strings like he could extract secrets from the hollow box. The guzheng’s body was carved out of Paulownia as single-piece boards, the soundboard roughened with a wire brush to improve the grip for the bridges, the bridges made of water buffalo bone tips. I’d always cringe when Hao lugged it outside, dangerously close to deep fryers and griddles spread with jian bing batter and eggs. But Hao’s aunt, Wei Dong Ayi, was drowning in money, so I supposed he never considered the consequences of damaging his instrument. Wei Dong Ayi would just buy him another because she had no children to spoil.

We both loved Wei Dong Ayi because she’d always bring us (or mostly Hao) something fancy and new: a flying contraption that you could control with your arm movements, magnetic drawing boards we’d shake around until our arms were sore, jade plectra for Hao to glamorize his instrument playing. Sometimes she’d bring us treats you could only make in a real oven instead of a stack of layered bamboo steamers. None of our homes had ovens, but Wei Dong Ayi’s house contained both a stainless-steel oven and a stove with six whole gas burners.

Wei Dong Ayi was arrested a week ago—supposedly for employing aestheticians at her beauty salon without paying taxes and proper wages—some skirting of legal requirements I didn’t know the details about. We didn’t have any unlawfulness here. You earned what you earned and paid what you paid, and that was that. Wei Dong Ayi told us she had done nothing wrong, that it would take no more than a month for her to sort out her affairs and emerge at our doorsteps like a persistent dandelion, offering goodies and egg tarts and sausage buns.

But she stopped showing up, and Hao told me his parents refused to mention what had happened to her. Instead, we spent our time sitting on the streets: Hao plucking at his expensive, matte guzheng engraved with birds whose wings looked like leaves. I watched him and then the streets and then him again.

When Hao’s parents found out we were on the streets strumming strings and wasting time instead of studying, they confiscated Hao’s guzheng and refused to let me see him.

“Hao is busy with math homework, he’s aiming for the best schools around here,” they’d say when I asked if Hao was around to play. Then they’d eye me, my old sack-like backpack made from old bedsheets and zippers stripped off worn jackets, as though I were better off not trying at all. Hao could still sneak out through his window which was connected to the balcony where clothing hung to dry. He could climb from the balcony to the stairs and escape the building with relative ease. We only hung out in the early mornings or late evenings when his parents were either asleep or praying. But he wasn’t able to bring his guzheng anymore. His parents claimed it was unrightfully obtained. That Wei Dong Ayi’s karma was unsalvageable.

“I can’t use things bought with ugly money,” Hao explained. “That’s why Wei Dong Ayi hasn’t come back. The changui ate her for her crimes.”

“How do you know?” I asked.

“Because she used bad money,” Hao whispered, looking around. “The changui are always listening. We shouldn’t continue talking about her.” Hao stopped playing the guzheng. The streets, although the daily bustle had not changed, seemed quieter. Hao seemed more reserved and stopped dragging me on his escapades. When I asked if he wanted to sing behind the opera house, he declined even though we once loved to mimic the men’s obnoxiously loud, squeaky voices.

“That’s not how women sound,” I’d laugh, holding my stomach, and Hao would mimic them by screeching even louder as I struggled to breathe through my giggles. The only things Hao and I would do together now were pick up breakfast from the steamed bao vendor. The red bean paste filling was too sweet and the pork filling skimpy on meat. We’d quiz each other on literature passages we needed to memorize. And yet, despite no difference in routine or meals (one bite of a sweet bao, one sip of tofu brains, one bite of a savory bao, and repeat), Hao seemed to turn paler with each passing day. He began to resemble one of those dolls made from unprocessed silkworm cocoons—stretched and thinned and translucent.

I found Hao’s guzheng in the flea market where folks bartered with their possessions. The instrument body sat on the ground, propping up several more boxes and a lantern wrapped in cloth so thin you could rip through it with blunt nails. I thought Hao would be ecstatic to receive the guzheng since he hadn’t played in days, and he was such an idiot for music. So, several days later, on the summer solstice, while everyone was slurping up noodles and worshiping the wheat fields, I snatched the guzheng from the ground, draped a blanket over the intricate body, and dragged it home. You could get killed for stealing and the police could do nothing about it—an “honor killing” the people would rally behind. You can’t arrest an entire town, after all. But I knew the chances of getting caught were slim, and I hoped folks were reasonable enough not to value a guzheng over my life.

“Check it out, I got this back for you,” I told Hao, waiting for him to reach for the instrument and rip off the blanket and smile his toothy grin. I pushed the guzheng toward him and peeled away the cloth, thinking he needed some encouragement. The edge bumped his knee, and he lashed his arm out, striking the wood edge and the strings and then my hand. The vibrations echoed for several seconds as I registered the slap of his hand against mine.

“What are you doing?” he glared. “Are you trying to get us killed?”

“What kind of changui is so morally stickler-ish that they’d go after you for playing music?” I asked, rubbing my hand.

“But Auntie Wei Dong—”

“—was arrested. Not eaten. That’s what happens when you break rules. There are no ghosts. Why would they want to eat her anyway? It’s not like they need physical energy.” I crossed my arms. “But fine, if you don’t want the guzheng, I’ll take it.”

Hao didn’t argue, and I lugged it home where Mom was peeling ginkgo nuts to sell as snacks the next day. She sold them in packages and carried them on her cart while biking down the streets of the rich people towns. Those folks thought the ginkgo nuts were some kind of panacea for all their afflictions.

But when I tried to sneak a handful to eat, Mom would bat at my hand and say, “If you eat more than ten, you will die.” She said ginkgo nuts were so healthy they were toxic in high doses and would cause nosebleeds, but I knew this couldn’t be true if all the rich people were still alive. Mom sat, head crouched and neck craning at her hands. She often descended into these hyper-focused states whenever money was tight, and we’d cook banana peels to bulk up our dishes. Mom used to look like one of those soft, flowy concubines drawn on long wall scrolls, the kind of beauty that’d steal the emperor’s attention and place her at the center of the harem’s wrath. But now, Mom seemed to be made of sharp edges.

“If I’d died while giving birth to you, my corpse would still look like them,” she joked to me when I didn’t believe that she’d once looked like those paintings.

Mom and Auntie Wei Dong used to drink tea and play darts together, but whenever Auntie Wei Dong offered money, Mom said no. Even when we only had half a sack of rice left. Or when the hole in my winter coat had ripped open again. After Auntie Wei Dong disappeared, I began to resent Mom for not swallowing her pride while Auntie was still around offering money. At the very least, I deserved the guzheng. It wasn’t even new. It was Hao’s leftover toy.

Mom didn’t notice me returning home. I walked around the kitchen, careful not to hit the guzheng against the walls. Once I’d found a nice, empty patch of ground in the storage closet to sit it down, I tossed the blanket off and plucked a string as I had seen Hao do. I tried to mimic everything I’d burned into my memory from watching Hao: subtle and fast strums as though I were walking my finger up and down the strings, fleeting wiggles ascending and descending a note, pinching strings in opposing directions like my fingers could fly.

By the time the changui visited, I had already mastered several basic songs I’d coerced Hao into teaching me. He would only give me the music notes and refused to be around when I played. His body continued to thin, his skin shriveling like drying red pepper, but when I insisted he hum the tunes for me, he seemed to brighten and regain some color to his cheeks.

I practiced in the closet with the door creaked slightly open for light to fall through. I couldn’t tell if Mom noticed—she’d always be murmuring or singing old nursery rhymes as she peeled ginkgo nuts like nothing existed beyond the pale orange bucket of nuts and her small, nimble hands.

The changui appeared at night after I had finished practicing and had just begun wetting the edges of my hair so they wouldn’t be too greasy before I slept. Full hair washes were too loud at night, the water roaring down pipes like dragons. The changui drifted toward me as I shut the closest, and I turned to stare at it.

The changui’s face reminded me of a deflated balloon—not entirely suctioned and sinking, but flaccid enough that I could see the folds and hollows of where flesh should’ve been. Like a stale ma qiu filled more with air than red bean paste. The changui’s body seemed to drift as it neared, sweeping the ground without a sound. I could see its gorged stomach and sagging breasts through its gossamer-like dress, half empty and half full. It gestured toward me, beckoning me forward, and because I did not believe Hao’s superstitions or the paranoia instilled in him by his parents, I followed.

“Are you here because I stole the guzheng?” I asked. If that were the case, I at least wanted to know, so I could prepare my excuses. “Are you going to take me?”

The changui responded with grunts and deep throaty sounds, like it was trying to strangle its voice. I was reminded of the doll Wei Dong Ayi gifted me because Hao didn’t want it, and I was her stand-in daughter. Wei Dong Ayi had bought the doll from a western store, so its eyes shone glossy blue and were bordered by long lashes. Its limbs were hard and cold but shaped like plump, fleshy gourds. It wore a plaid-patterned dress with lace and frills decorating the hem. Wei Dong Ayi brought it in her suitcase all the way overseas, so its voice box had gotten a bit wrangled up and instead of chiming a bright, “hello, how are you,” it’d emit a low drone interspersed with light whirs and buzzes. I avoided pressing the sound button on the back of its neck because it sounded like it might explode in my hands after too many plays.

I reached a hand out toward the changui’s hand, wondering if it’d go through. But instead, I grabbed onto something not quite solid nor transparent. I gripped my fingers right around its hand, and like water, its limbs seemed to bend and fold to the force of my hold.

The changui held my hand like a soft-boiled egg about to tear. Then it stroked each one of my fingers as though they were smooth rice wraps rather than callused, unevenly scarred phalanges. It brought my hand to its mouth and opened wide to bite down. I watched as its jaw closed on my fingers, and instead of a sharp pain I expected to come with crunching through my skin, it felt like a heavy blanket suffocating my hand. After several seconds, it loosened its jaw, and I pulled my hand away. I stretched my fingers: they remained intact, as though nothing had bitten into them.

The next day, long after the changui left, I showed Hao my hand.

“Of course it came after you. You’re playing a stolen guzheng,” he said.

“It was yours,” I replied, holding back an eye roll.

“Doesn’t matter,” he remained convinced.

But as the days passed and the changui continued to visit during my private practice sessions, I grew more and more certain that the changui had come from Auntie Wei Dong, a remnant of her belongings before she vanished—her money and home gobbled by the government because she had no children to inherit. It never disturbed me while I played, and in fact, the changui had begun to provide useful tips: move my index finger like I’m beating eggs to lengthen the sound, keep my head upright to have a good field of vision.

In return, I told it how Hao had started growing white hairs and had stopped being fun—always studying for school, or if it wasn’t for school, for cram classes. I told it that Mom was never going to pay off her debts by peeling ginkgo nuts and Wei Dong Ayi should’ve dispersed her cash better before getting caught for manipulative personal business finances. The changui would rub its stomach as it listened, and when I paused, it’d hum in an acknowledgment, as though to encourage me to continue, like it knew I had more to say if I reached deep enough.

“I don’t think the changui does any harm,” I proposed as a theory to Hao even though I believed it to be true.”

“It has probably gotten to you already, that’s why,” he said. “It’s biding its time, but rest assured it grows hungrier every moment.”

I shrugged. I figured Hao didn’t know what he was talking about. He didn’t know a lot of things beyond obsessive work ethic. It was nearly summer break and Hao’s workload showed no signs of abating. With the school season ending, his cram schools had only assigned more and more mock exams. While he sat with his back hunched and head dipping into his papers, I practiced the guzheng—experimenting with new, different sounds I could produce.

It was the last day of school when we got to go home early—early enough you could make the youtiao vendors that closed shop before five—that I discovered Mom missing from the table, the usual crackling sounds of the ginkgo nut shells now silent. In her place sat the changui rubbing its hands, licking its lips, slouching in the chair like a satiated cat, and smiling at me with all the love of a mother.