Substitute

by Nicholson Baker

  “Well, thank you,” said Ms. Accardo. “We’re going to go to lunch, and then we’re going to come back.”

  We went to the teachers’ lunchroom, and Ms. Accardo introduced me to several teachers sitting at a round table. I started eating a chicken-salad sandwich. One of the teachers, Mrs. Plaistow, told a story of getting locked out of her lakeside camp cottage. She was out walking her dog, when her daughter went out to smoke a cigarette and forgot to bring her keys with her. Mrs. Plaistow went to a neighbor’s house to ask for help. A fifteen-year-old kid came to the door in boxers. “That’s all he’s got on is boxers. Two black Labs barking their heads off. He says, ‘I’ll go over, we’ll break into your camp.’ His dad pulls on his pants, he says, ‘I’ll go over.’” The dad went to work on the door with a credit card. “Forty-five minutes, he struggled with that door,” said Mrs. Plaistow. “I said, ‘I feel so much better! You say you’ve never had a latch you couldn’t get open, and you’re struggling.’ He goes, ‘Don’t remind me.’ He goes off to get a sledgehammer to break the lock. Three hours, standing in the cold. The dog was happy, he was playing in the snow.” She offered the son and the dad some deer-meat chili. “The dad says, ‘You don’t have to give us any chili. This is what neighbors do. Someday we might need something from you.’ I said, ‘That’s probably doubtful.’ He goes, ‘Yeah, probably it is. But you never know.’” End of story.

  Mrs. Rausch, a math teacher, talked about how, when she had to miss a day, she always left way more worksheets for the class than the substitute could ever get the class to do. Some subs just let the kids go wild and swing from the chandeliers, she said. Another teacher, Mrs. Thwaite, who sold Mary Kay cosmetics, invited Mrs. Plaistow and Mrs. Rausch to come over for facials on Thursday. Mrs. Plaistow accepted.

  “Nothing’s going to make my face look any better,” said Mrs. Rausch.

  Ms. Accardo and I walked back to the modular classroom. She resumed the lesson. “Two-person seat carry—anyone want to do that?”

  Nobody volunteered.

  “I had a kid break his foot out on the field,” Ms. Accardo said. “Getting the wheelchair across an athletic field is not an easy feat. Way easier to get him into the building with a two-person seat carry.”

  She waited. Still nobody volunteered.

  “So you’re all good on how to carry people!” she said sarcastically. “No one wants to practice!”

  “I want to drag someone,” said Anabelle. “Can I drag you?”

  Ms. Accardo got down on the floor. “Go ahead, drag me,” she said. She pretended to be unconscious.

  “Somebody videotape this!” said Ronald.

  The girl struggled, but couldn’t move Ms. Accardo. Kiefer stepped in to help, lifting Ms. Accardo’s head.

  Ms. Accardo opened her eyes for a moment. “I’ll move my hair out of the way, sorry,” she said. She resumed unconsciousness.

  “I don’t want to rip her shirt,” said Anabelle. Eventually she successfully slid Ms. Accardo several feet over the floor.

  We watched another educational video. “Most of us will experience some kind of severe injury at some time in our lives,” said the narrator, while a loop of ambient new-age music played in the background. We watched actors moaning in pain from several gruesome soft-tissue injuries, and we learned how to apply pressure on a wound to stop the bleeding. When the movie was over, Ms. Accardo talked about how to deal with impaled objects. “You don’t let the person take out the impaled object!” she said. “They have to resist the urge!” Her marker made squeaking sounds on the whiteboard as she drew a picture. “When there is an impaled object—let’s say here’s your arm, and here is the knife blade.”

  “Ew,” said Cayley.

  “God,” said Ronald.

  “Here’s the knife blade, here is a blood vessel. Blood flow is stopped. Pressure, pressure.” She erased the knife with her finger and, with a cry of agony, pulled an imaginary knife from her arm. “Now the knife is missing, and . . .” She drew jets of blood splashing out of the wound. “Squirt, squirt, squirt. Now it’s open to bacteria, it’s open to increased bleeding.” She thought for a second. “You get something impaled in your eyeball?” She pretended to pull something out of her eye. “Aaaah, out comes the eyeball!” She told us where our various arterial pressure points were—“If you have a gusher, press on a pressure point”—and she warned us against using tourniquets. Finally, with a minute left, she asked the class to practice bandaging some wounds. I waved goodbye and hustled off across the parking lot to a ninth-grade remedial English class in the North Building, a separate one-story structure where all the freshmen were segregated.

  The regular teacher was out. In her place was a fashionably dressed substitute of about sixty named Mrs. Carlisle, who wore artsy earrings and had a Florida tan. There were six kids in the class, crowded around two perpendicular tables in a room whose walls were covered with definitions and rules of grammar. The kids were slapping binders around and shouting. I introduced myself to Mrs. Carlisle as the substitute ed tech, shook hands with her, and sat down. “You need to calm down!” said a frowny smartass boy, Lance, loudly, to one of the binder slappers, Alan.

  Mrs. Carlisle turned. “I have not had the pleasure of having you before,” she said to Lance.

  “You’re in for a rude awakening,” said Leanne, a girl with short black hair and goth makeup.

  “There’s something you need to know about me,” said Mrs. Carlisle. “I’m not just some warm body off the street that’s here to babysit you. I’m a school counselor, have been for twenty-five years, hope to be again. So with that said, I’m hoping that you’re going to do the things you’re supposed to do, so that I don’t have to do what I’m supposed to do when you don’t. Otherwise I’m very easy to get along with.” Everyone was quieter after she said that she’d been a school counselor for twenty-five years. She handed out the first worksheet, which was about idioms. “You guys remember what an idiom is?” She read its definition: a saying that does not make literal, logical, or grammatical sense, but people within the culture understand its meaning. She said, “The example they give is, Don’t let the cat out of the bag. Doesn’t mean a cat’s really going to pop out of the bag, okay?”

  “Riaow!” said Leanne.

  “So you need to use this idiom in your writing today: a blessing in disguise.”

  “What does that mean?” asked Brianne, a big girl in a very small striped shirt.

  “Think about it for a minute,” said Mrs. Carlisle. “I heard one this morning. I was helping someone write, and their prompt was if anyone from the war had shared stories with them. One of the students was telling me that one of his stories was that his brother had to go to the bathroom. He was in Iraq, and then the bomb sirens went off, so he hit the dirt. The latrine that he would have gone to was blown up. It was a ‘blessing in disguise’ that the sirens went off, because he hit the dirt instead of being in the latrine. Okay?”

  The class was silent, thinking this over.

  “Or it might be,” Mrs. Carlisle continued, “that when we had the snow the other day, I was going home, and a truck and a car had hit each other. The side of the car was gone. Everyone was okay. They were all standing there talking. So everyone was safe, but it was one of those really slippery days. So it was a ‘blessing in disguise’ that I stayed late to talk to a teacher. Because otherwise I might have been that car. Do you get the idea?”

  “Yep,” said Leanne. “Kind of.”

  “So you can get started on that. I’m going to give you till ten after.” She pointed to me. “And this is . . .”

  “Nick,” I said. “Mr. Baker.”

  Everyone laughed: there was another Baker in the class, Lance Baker.

  “That’s creepy,” said Brianne.

  “Smells like marshmallows in here,” said Leanne.

  “Do you girls need pencils?” asked Mrs. Car
lisle. “Shh! Voices off!”

  Alan cleared his throat phlegmily.

  “Shh!”

  The remedial grind of the pencil sharpener. Giggling. Muttering. Whispering. Tapping of pencils. Time passing.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, you have four minutes left! I should not hear any voices!”

  More muttering and giggling. Lance collected some of the papers.

  “Take it away, squire!” said Leanne, holding out her sheet.

  “What’s a squire?” said Lance.

  “It’s like a butler,” said Leanne.

  “No way!”

  Mrs. Carlisle asked Lance to describe what he’d written. “I wrote, like, two things,” he said. “I’ll do my second one, because it’s funny. Most of you have already heard this. I saw a squirrel, and I went to go shoot at it. I missed, and it hit the tree, and it ricocheted and hit me where the sun don’t shine.”

  Mrs. Carlisle cocked her head. “Okay, so how’s that a blessing in disguise? I guess if you’re the squirrel.”

  “It could have hit my face and put my eye out!” said Lance. “And then, my second one, I was sitting in my room, and I had my paintball gun in my hand.”

  “Oh, god,” said Brianne, rolling her eyes.

  “You’re a dangerous child,” said Mrs. Carlisle.

  “And I had my hand over the barrel, and I didn’t think it was loaded, and I accidentally pulled the trigger, and I had a huge bruise on the side of my hand.”

  “A bruise, not a burn?” said Mrs. Carlisle.

  “It was a bruise,” said Lance.

  “Good thing it wasn’t a flamethrower!” said a goofy kid named Samuel.

  “I’ve seen kids get horrible burns on their faces from paintball guns,” said Mrs. Carlisle.

  “I got shot by one, it hurt,” said Brianne.

  “Are you sharing?” said Mrs. Carlisle, turning to her. “Go ahead, share.”

  “One day when my brother and I were home alone,” the girl said, “he had a lighter, that he was playing with. I was in the other room, and I walked in, and he told me to see how hot it was, and I didn’t believe him, so he threw it at me, and he burned me with it.” She laughed. “If you have a lighter on too long, the metal will get hot. It left a mark on my shoulder.”

  “So how’s that a blessing in disguise?” said Mrs. Carlisle.

  Brianne pondered. “My dad came home?”

  “She wasn’t killed,” said Leanne.

  Mrs. Carlisle shook her head. “A blessing in disguise would have been if your dad came home before your brother had a chance to throw the lighter at you. You wrote a story, and that’s great, but we still want you to know what the idiom means. And I’m thinking you’re still a little confused.”

  Leanne said, “One time I was in a car with my mom. We were on the road going to my appointment, and I was listening to music, and next thing I knew, my mom’s hand was on my chest. She hit the brakes really hard.”

  “The mom reaction!” said Mrs. Carlisle.

  “And the car in front of us just, like, busted right into the other car in front of them,” Leanne said. “So it was a blessing in disguise that my mom stopped before we actually hit.”

  “Remember when you popped a wheelie with the four-wheeler?” said Alan to Lance.

  “I remember that!” said Lance. “I’ll try anything once.”

  “I’m sure you will,” said Mrs. Carlisle.

  “He popped a wheelie on his four-wheeler and fell off the back of it,” said Alan.

  “Nice.”

  That was the end of assignment number one. Mrs. Carlisle gave instructions for the next worksheet, which had four pages. It was about figurative language. We had to underline and label each instance of figurative language in a story about an airport. Mrs. Carlisle said, “You should find one simile, one metaphor, two hyperboles, two examples of personification, one alliteration, three onomatopoeias, two idioms, and one allusion, okay?”

  A shy girl named Misty raised her hand. “How do you find these if you don’t even know what they are?”

  “All you have to do is turn around,” said Brianne. Everyone turned to read the definitions on the back wall.

  Samuel began singing, “Oh no, moto peeya.”

  We did a little review. A simile compared two things using like or as, but a metaphor compared two things without using like or as. “So, the playground at Lasswell was an ice rink,” said Mrs. Carlisle. “That’s a metaphor.” Evidently she’d been subbing recently at Lasswell Elementary School.

  “An onomatopoeia is . . .” She trailed off, searching her notes. “I’m a little rusty, so I looked these up for you guys. It also, um, compares two things.” She seemed doubtful and she looked at me. “Do you have anything to add?”

  I said that an onomatopoeia was a word that sounded like what it meant. “So if the thunder goes ‘rumble rumble rumble,’ the word is trying to imitate what thunder actually sounds like. Or ‘He squeaked loudly when he sat down on the tack.’ The squeak—eek—is kind of a word that sounds like what it means.” I felt myself blushing—it was the first teaching I’d done that day.

  “Eek,” said Leanne.

  Mrs. Carlisle reviewed alliteration: “Dunkin’ Donuts has the same sound where? At the beginning of the word. Does that help? Yes, no, maybe so? Get started and we’ll see where it goes from there.”

  Leanne said, “Can I have my pencil?”

  “Get out of your chair and reach for it,” said Mrs. Carlisle.

  The students hunched over the story and read it silently. Mrs. Carlisle and I compared notes, whispering. It was not a very good story, and there were some ambiguities.

  After fifteen minutes, Brianne said, “I did not get any of this. We just started learning this.”

  “Don’t get frustrated,” said Mrs. Carlisle. “We can go through it together. These are tricky, guys.”

  We started with the first page, which said, Jason could feel butterflies in his stomach as he entered the bustling airport. “This place is a zoo!” his mother exclaimed as she got in line at the ticket counter.

  Lance said, “I thought ‘This place is a zoo’ is a hyperbowl.”

  “Some of these could go either way,” said Mrs. Carlisle. “I said it was a metaphor. But it could also be a hyperbole, because it’s saying the place is a zoo. Jason could feel butterflies in his stomach. What do you think that is?”

  “Nervous,” said Brianne.

  “Well, yeah, he’s nervous, but what figure of speech are we using here?”

  “A hyperbowl?” said Alan. He sniffed. “Somebody’s using perfume.”

  “Personification?” said Misty.

  “What is that smell?” said Alan.

  “Can you really feel butterflies in your stomach?” said Mrs. Carlisle.

  “No,” said Leanne.

  “So isn’t it kind of like letting the cat out of the bag?”

  “It’s kind of a tickle in your stomach,” said Lance.

  “Unless you swallow a butterfly,” said Samuel.

  “Right,” said Mrs. Carlisle, “but it doesn’t say that Jason swallowed a butterfly.”

  Lance said, “Like when you go up the hill and the roller coaster drops down and it’s like a tickle in your stomach. And then you look down and say, ‘Waaaaaaaaah!’”

  “An allusion?” said Brianne.

  Mrs. Carlisle moved on. “How about She got in line behind about a million other people. Are there really a million people there?”

  “Exaggeration,” said Leanne.

  “So if it’s an exaggeration, what is it?”

  “That would be an opanapo . . . ,” said Alan.

  “How about hyperbole? What’s a hyperbole?”

  Brianne turned and read the definition on the wall. “An exaggeration that is so dramat
ic that no one would believe it to be true.”

  “I know an allusion,” said Misty. She found the place in the story that she’d underlined and read it. “Jason noticed that the security guard looked more intimidating than Mr. T. I found that!”

  “Yep, allusion,” said Mrs. Carlisle, checking her notes. “It’s making reference to something or someone. Good job, Misty.”

  Farther down the page we came to another passage: Jason placed his shoes, belt, and change onto the tired conveyor belt and walked through the metal detector. Mrs. Carlisle said, “Tired purveyor belt! Can the purveyor belt really get tired?”

  “It can break down,” said Lance. “It can go, pkkkkk!”

  “Is it really sleepy?” said Mrs. Carlisle. “No.”

  The PA system bonged. “Please excuse the interruption for a few announcements. Track practice will begin at two-fifteen in the gym, our first tangible sign that spring is indeed here. There will be a parent informational meeting for all boys’ and girls’ track athletes this Thursday at six p.m. in the auditorium. All parents are encouraged to attend.”

  “Make sure your names are on your papers!” said Mrs. Carlisle. “I should have six papers! I have five! I have Leanne’s. I have Brianne’s. I have Lance’s, I have Misty’s, I have—”

  “This is not really a fanny pack,” said Lance loudly. “This is a knapsack.”

  “Hobo sack!” said Alan.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” said Mrs. Carlisle. “Push in your chairs.”

  “Lance is Hobo Joe,” said Alan.

  “Stack the chairs,” said Mrs. Carlisle.

  “We don’t stack the chairs in this class,” said Lance.

  “If it’s too hard for you,” said Mrs. Carlisle, “I’ll stack them after.”

  “We don’t stack them,” said Leanne.

  “That’s what I’m trying to say!” said Lance.

  “Listen, why do you think we stack chairs?” said Mrs. Carlisle.

  “So that people don’t fall over them?” said Misty.

  “How do you think the rug gets vacuumed at night, guys?”