Substitute

by Nicholson Baker

  “This time of year it’s all singing, because they’re preparing for a concert,” he said. “We also do a lot of dancing and other types of movements.”

  “Sounds like fun,” I said.

  “Oh, we have fun in music,” said Mr. Holland. “The only reason to do music is because it’s fun. If it’s not fun, don’t waste everyone’s time.”

  A few minutes later, the PE teacher showed up to ask me to tell the class to wear sneakers, because gym was inside today. “We did snowshoeing last week, but we’re not doing snowshoeing this week,” she explained.

  Students began arriving and hanging up their backpacks. They were supposed to practice handwriting the letter P on a worksheet. I met Nash, Zeke, JoBeth, Rory, Danielle, Zoe, Carlton, Larissa, and two girls named Amber, and I made some headway with attendance. There were twenty-two kids in all; the noise level rose with each new arrival. “Put your hair up, Zoe,” said Danielle. “I’m NOT PUTTING MY HAIR UP,” said Zoe, in a remarkably loud, penetrating voice. An elegant, dark-eyebrowed girl wearing red lipstick, Nadia, sighed sadly. “It’s usually crazy in the mornings,” she said to me. “Especially after St. Patrick’s Day. Top o’ the morning to you! I just love saying that.” I asked her how dojo points worked. “If they’re being crazy, write their name down, and put a check next to it meaning they lost a point.” Carlton was already being crazy, slamming his backpack around and making sudden screams and climbing on the chairs. He wore black pants with red stripes down the sides.

  “Carlton, BE RESPECTFUL!” said Zoe.

  “You’re going to be totally good,” I said to Carlton. “I can see it in your eyes. What are you interested in?”

  “Football.”

  “What team do you like?”

  “The Broncos. I’m going to try out for football next year.”

  “I’m NOT PUTTING MY HAIR UP!” said Zoe.

  “Okay, hello, everybody,” I said.

  “GIRLS, GUYS, LISTEN!” Danielle shouted piercingly.

  “Don’t shout,” I said to her. “As you can see, I’m not Mrs. Browning. I’m the sub, and I’m really hoping that you will use quiet, normal voices, and not shout, because it’s a lot easier and saner if we do that. I’ll write my name on the board, I’m Nick Baker. Mr. Baker.”

  “Mr. what?”

  “Mr. Baker, like bake me a cake.”

  “Do you know Cassidy Baker?” asked Troy.

  “No.”

  “Do you know Lance Baker?” asked Nicole.

  “No.” I wrote my name on the whiteboard.

  “That’s not a dry-erase marker!” said JoBeth.

  “Oh, no,” I said. I’d permanently defaced the whiteboard.

  “It’s okay,” said JoBeth. “I know how to get rid of it!” She busily scrubbed my name off with a paper towel and some water until it disappeared. Carlton handed me a green dry-erase marker. “I KNOW WHERE EVERYTHING IS!” he said at the top of his lungs.

  “Okay, but one thing you know is the less shouting you do the better,” I said. “How’s it going with the letter P? P is pretty important, P starts peace and quiet. Peas.” I couldn’t think of any others.

  Someone was slamming around binders; someone else was grinding loudly away on the mechanical pencil sharpener by the sink, sharpening his way through half the pencil.

  “They’re supposed to be working silently,” said JoBeth.

  “How often do you get a sub?” I asked Nash, who seemed rational and on-the-ball.

  “Not that often, but when we do—” He shook his head. “Let me just say this before the day starts: Good luck.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Maybe we’ll learn a few things and, you know, have some fun. The only thing I don’t like is shouting. How do you feel about shouting?”

  “I’m not a big fan of it,” said Nash, “but sometimes I will, when I get too angry. But that doesn’t happen often.”

  Nash’s friend Zeke pointed to an empty chair. “This kid here, Ian? He cannot control his anger. When it gets really loud, he gets mad and he loses control.”

  Nash said, “Yeah, when he’s working and it’s supposed to be dead silent in here, and it gets loud, he can’t control himself.”

  The principal’s voice came over the PA system. “Good morning, please stand for the pledge.”

  Everyone stood and turned, and then, instant uproar. The day before, it seemed, somebody had taken down the American flag and propped it in the corner, putting a small Irish flag in its place. I’d noticed the flag when I came in but hadn’t paid attention to it—it was just one of innumerable colorful objects in the overstuffed, low-ceilinged room.

  “Take it down!” said Zeke.

  “No!” said several others—there was no time.

  “WE NEED RESPECT FOR THE AMERICAN FLAG!” said Zoe.

  But the pledge had already begun, and we took up the chanted words in progress: “. . . indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.” When it was over, the class launched into a second singsongily chanted recitation, with words taken from a poster that hung on the wall. “TODAY IS A NEW DAY,” the class said in unison. “I WILL ACT IN A SAFE AND HEALTHY WAY. I WILL DO WHAT I KNOW IS RIGHT. I WILL THINK BEFORE I ACT. I WILL TAKE CARE OF MYSELF, MY FRIENDS, AND MY SCHOOL. TODAY I WILL BE THE BEST THAT I CAN BE.”

  “That’s inspiring,” I said, when it was over.

  “GUYS, BE QUIET!” screamed Zoe. How could so much voice come out of such a small person?

  “So,” I said, “we just said the Pledge of Allegiance to the Irish flag. We’ll want to put the real one back up, won’t we?”

  “No,” said Ross, “because the leprechauns did that.”

  I left the flag substitution for Mrs. Browning to correct. Several latecomers arrived and got settled. The principal said that the lunch choices were pigs in blankets, pizza, and SunButter and jelly. SunButter was fake peanut butter, somebody explained to me.

  “I’M NOT PUTTING UP MY HAIR, DANIELLE!”

  “Okay, guys,” I said, “it’s nine o’clock, quiet down, do work.”

  “No, it’s nine oh three,” said Ethan, and pointed at the clock.

  “Nine oh three, thank you,” I said.

  “If someone is being wild, you can just send him to Mr. Pierce,” said Larissa. “Yesterday was horrible.” Mr. Pierce was the school principal.

  “HAH HAH!” said Carlton, the loud boy she was referring to, hanging up his lunch box.

  The class assignment, a carryover from the day before, was to write a few sentences about what happened over the weekend. Some kids had written more than a page and were done, others had written nothing. I paused in front of Toby, a boy with solemn eyes and round cheeks, who was running his hands through his hair. There was a blank piece of paper in front of him. “So what did you do this past weekend?” I asked him.

  “Nothing,” Toby said.

  “Did you eat a cheese sandwich?”

  “No, I had a ham sandwich.”

  “When you ate that first bite of ham sandwich, what did it taste like?”

  “It tasted like ham.”

  “That’s it! ‘I ate a ham sandwich. It tasted like ham.’ You are in good shape. Can you write that, please?”

  Toby started to write, then stopped. Each letter he wrote seemed to be spun out of an odd backward circling motion.

  We gathered for morning meeting near the whiteboard. All the students sat on the floor. Nadia explained that they were supposed to read what they’d written. Those who hadn’t written could say “pass,” or they could say aloud what they would have written if they’d written it.

  Here’s what was going on in their weekend lives. JoBeth was learning to balance a sword on her head like her mom: “It’s fun but you have to be very careful, or you’ll get stabbed badly.” Danielle went to a monster truck rally and almost got a splatball e
gg at the mall. Sara made some origami figures. Nicole, Rory, and Troy played Minecraft; Nicole said there was a weird stalker guy following her around in the game. Carlton worked with his dad on his pinewood derby car. Nash raced in a pinewood derby and came in second twice but seventh overall. Zeke said he was going to go to monster trucks with his dad, but his dad said it was sixty dollars just to get in the front door, so his dad looked up the Harlem Globetrotters, and tickets for them cost three hundred dollars, so he took them to The Lego Movie instead, and then after the movie they were going to go to the gun show but they didn’t. Zoe was going to get a new iPod but didn’t. Toby ate a ham sandwich. Pauline, who was shy, went to the science museum to celebrate her brother’s birthday, and a scientist rubbed a balloon on her head. Larissa was FaceTimed by two boys from class and then she whittled a stick with a knife for twenty minutes. Jess picked up her dog’s ashes—she still missed him—and she slept over at her friend’s and FaceTimed with two boys from class. Amber L. went to the doctor’s to be tested for strep throat and then went to her aunt’s house and then she rode her bike with her brother. Amber S. got a new bike and learned that the Girl Scouts have sold more than a million boxes of cookies in the state of Maine. Ian went swimming at the YMCA. Ethan started to write a book about a girl who uncovers secrets about her family and brings an evil creature to life, and then he decorated a cake with a whale for his mom’s boyfriend, and afterward he learned that cake decorating was in his family on both sides: “I have cake decorating in my blood basically,” he said. Amanda said the stove in her house caught fire and her brother helped her get out of the house. Nadia said she made a tunnel in a snowbank that was big enough that she could turn around inside it.

  While they were telling their stories there were many interruptions: a secretary came by to ask how many people were having pigs in blankets, another secretary called on the intercom to ask if I could send the attendance to the office, and the three loudest girls repeatedly said QUIET! STOP TALKING! SHHH! GUYS, BE QUIET! SHHH! BE RESPECTFUL! GUYS, LET HER TALK! GUYS, STAY IN THE CIRCLE! GUYYYYYSSS!—unable to keep themselves from disrupting the proceedings with their scandalized scolding, even when I told them that their shouting “Stop talking!” didn’t help at all and actually made things considerably worse. Also Carlton was doing chin-ups under his desk, and Nash was playing with his pinewood derby car.

  “That was really great,” I said at the end. “A little loud, but great.”

  We lined up for gym. As I was dropping them off to play kickball, Nadia, who had taken pity on me, said, “Mr. Baker, you look like somebody who would teach at the middle school, or high school.”

  I told her I wrote books for a living.

  She said, “If you need help with anything, I’m always here.”

  I thanked her and went back to class to sit and drink coffee.

  After gym came snack time. Everyone was irritable and full of resentments over the kickball game: the teacher had made several bad calls. Nash had gotten in trouble because Carlton lied, and the feud between the loud boys and the even louder tattletale girls was heating up. Somebody stole somebody’s cookie. I lost my dog-eared sub plans and hunted for them among the polychrome clutter for several panicked minutes. The kids who had brought peanut-butter granola bars had to eat them at tables in the hall, outside the class, because of the no-peanut rule, but after they finished they got boisterous and a nearby teacher, Mrs. Clayton, came out and said, “You are disturbing a group that’s in the back corner of my room!”

  I herded them all back in. “That was a disaster,” I said. I ordered everyone to sit down and be quiet, and I gave Amanda, the paper passer, a social studies quiz on the points of the compass to pass out. They were supposed to define the meaning of the following terms, using words and illustrations:

  compass rose

  north

  south

  east

  west

  northeast

  southeast

  northwest

  southwest

  The sub plans said: “DO NOT HELP THEM! This is a test and I need to know if they know the answers.” Well, a handful of kids knew the answers, but most were mystified. “I don’t get what this means,” they said. “I can’t remember any of this.” Many did not know what a compass rose was, and others had no idea how to define the word north. I didn’t know how to define north myself—not that it mattered, since I was forbidden from offering hints. Sara remembered a directional mnemonic: Never Eat Soggy Waffles; Zeke changed it to Never Eat Soggy Whales. They all passed in their quizzes and I handed out a second social studies worksheet, in which they were supposed to draw the map of an imaginary city, with a key to symbols used, and a compass showing which way north was. Ethan began drawing a circus. Rory embarked on a map of the world he’d made in Minecraft. Troy worked on a map of a place called Skull Country. The noise level, post-quiz, swiftly rose to unimaginable heights, with shrill charges and countercharges flying around the room: WHAT THE HECK IS WRONG WITH YOU? GUYS, IT’S NOT RECESS! Ian—the one who got angry when it was supposed to be quiet and it wasn’t—became enraged. He went over to the trash can, furiously tore up several pieces of crumpled paper that he found within it, and threw them on the floor. Then he picked up the torn pieces and put them back in the trash can.

  The reading specialist appeared in the door with a quizzical expression. I apologized for the madhouse. I felt sick with shame. “I’m going to help you out here,” she said. Suddenly her contralto voice boomed out. “I KNOW YOU CAN SHOW MR. BAKER WHAT YOU ARE NORMALLY LIKE,” she said. The class got a little quieter—not much. “You guys need to do what is expected of you!”

  Nash said, “Some people are doing it and some people are not doing it.”

  There was a scream of indignation from across the room.

  “The people who are doing the right thing should continue to do the right thing, and other people will follow,” said the reading specialist.

  Sara said, “It’s hard to do the right thing when everyone’s distracting us!”

  “You need to show Mr. Baker what you normally do,” said the reading specialist, “because this will not make for a fun day for him.”

  She left.

  I had them line up. Nicole and Carlton fought for position. “This is ridiculous!” I said. I told them they couldn’t leave for recess until they got quiet, which of course worked—taking away recess time was one of the school’s standard punishments. They began to file out, piloted by a teacher with recess duty. I stopped Nash and said, “Nash, if you only knew how loud your voice is.”

  Nash looked sheepish. “I know. I wished you luck! I did. I get angry.”

  Nadia stayed behind to offer counsel. “Usually if stuff gets this bad,” she said, “you have to go to the guidance counselor and have her talk to us. A lot of kids have anger issues, and there’s some not-nice kids in here.” She led me to the guidance counselor’s office, but the guidance counselor was busy talking to a parent. She then led me to the main office and pointed to a door. “Mr. Pierce is right through there,” she said. “He knows the school very well.”

  I thanked her. “It must be hard for you,” I said.

  “Some people get so frustrated that they end up acting crazy,” she said. “Like Ian. Sometimes he makes a sound like he’s a gorilla. And then other people get mad at him, when really he’s just frustrated.”

  “You’ve been very helpful,” I said.

  She went off to recess. I went to Mr. Pierce’s office and introduced myself. “I’m not controlling the class well,” I said. “They’re very loud.”

  He nodded gravely. “They are very loud, yes,” he said.

  “I just wondered if you could come down and talk to them.”

  He said he would in a little while.

  I sat at my desk, feeling guilty that the class had gotten so out of control that Ian had had to
tear up the paper in the trash can. The sub plans said that after recess the class was supposed to work for half an hour on their mystery stories, critiquing each other’s work using a checklist, but they hadn’t finished their imaginary cities. Fortunately the imaginary-city task was supposed to be a two-day project. I was tired of the intense fluorescent light and I turned off the switch.

  The class came bouncing and shouting back in from recess, blinded by the bright snow. “It’s dark in here!” they said.

  I had them take out their partly written mystery stories, which they were supposed to be recopying onto a half-folded piece of paper, thus leaving room for marginal comments. Amber S. was writing about a theft at a chocolate shop. She was supposed to think about whether it contained the required elements: feelings of excitement and anxiety, a plot twist, conflict, and a surprise ending. “What genre do you write?” she asked me, politely. Jess was busily writing down names of malefactors in the class and making dojo point checkmarks beside them. “I have a headache because it’s so noisy,” she said.

  Just before lunch, the reading specialist came back. “Kids, show Mr. Baker a quiet line!” she said. “CARLTON! ZEKE! SHOW MR. BAKER A QUIET LINE!” She was having no luck. Fortunately at that moment Mr. Pierce arrived, portly and frowning. He stood by the whiteboard and waited. The class became still and downcast. He spoke in a quiet voice. “You need to do what you know is right,” he said. “And if you don’t, you’ll spend the afternoon with me, so that others in your room can do what they know is right.” He let that sink in. “I already have a letter written,” he continued. “All that’s missing is your parents’ names and your name. Whoever comes down, I’ll fill out a letter, with your name and your parents’ names, and I’ll send it home. And I’ll give a copy to Mrs. Browning tomorrow. So I’m all ready. I’m willing to have company. But I’d rather not have it. All I ask is for you to do what’s right. You’re good people and I know you can do it.”