Substitute

by Nicholson Baker

  Yes.

  No.

  “Should I read something, or should I let you talk quietly?”

  Read!

  “LET’S TALK!” shouted Connie.

  “Don’t shout,” I said. “Why would you shout?”

  “I don’t know,” Connie said.

  I sat and said nothing and waited for quiet. It came.

  “All right,” I said, “let’s read a paragraph at random. So this is about a guy whose throat is very dry. That’s a dramatic situation. Has anyone had a dry throat in your life?”

  Me!

  “Exciting stuff, eh? Had a cough? Okay, they’re on the wagon train. They’re trying to cross to Oregon in wagons, and it’s hot and they’re tired, and they’re bored. Just as we are. Are we tired?”

  Yeah.

  No!

  Let’s have a party!

  I read. “‘I’m tired,’ Becky said as they started. GUYS OVER THERE IN THE CORNER, WILL YOU SIT DOWN AND BE QUIET, PLEASE?” I waited again in my chair, looking sad. I felt sad, honestly.

  “Guys, he’s trying to read,” said Hope.

  “Really, just settle down, come on,” I said. “‘I’m tired,’ Becky said as they started. ‘Come on now.’ Ben took her hand. ‘Today’s walk will be easy.’ But it wasn’t. Before an hour had passed, the sun dried the soil to dust. The ironclad wheels of fifty-nine wagons crushed the dry grasses to a powder. Clouds of dust hung in the air by the time the Clarks’ wagon finally passed. ‘Carry me!’ Becky begged. Ben didn’t answer. The dust made his— What is that sound coming from your throat?”

  Jasper went still.

  “Thank you. The dust made his throat hurt. His chest felt tired and sore, and a tickle was teasing deep inside. ‘Don’t start coughing,’ Ben told himself. ‘Just don’t start.’”

  Once again, I saw the power of fiction read aloud to bring a class of twenty Maine kids to a state of rapt, attentive silence. “The harder he coughed, the less air he got, and the more scared he was. His face felt cold, and he was getting dizzy. Air! He needed air! ‘Mama,’ he heard Becky yell, ‘Ben’s face is all white.’ Pa ran to help Ben up into the wagon.”

  A hand. “Um, Ms. Collins is coming back,” said Lindsay.

  “It’s two-fifteen,” said Alex. “It’s time to go.”

  “We should at least line up,” said Lindsay.

  I closed the book. “Okay, let’s line up.”

  Everybody lined up, ready to go to computer lab.

  Ms. Collins was out in the hall talking to a teacher. “I’m coming, sorry,” she said. “Ooh, it’s hot in here.”

  “Just like in that story,” said Tina to me.

  Ms. Collins took charge. “Guys, BEFORE WE GO, I want these chairs stacked, I want the floors cleaned up, so NOBODY should be in line. Let’s all take ownership for this room, please. Clean up, clean up. I see papers on the floor.” She dismissed me. “Thank you for your help, that’s so nice.”

  “Bye, Mr. Baker,” said Jasper.

  I waved and, once out in the hall, studied my schedule. Room 7 was next. As I walked away I heard Ms. Collins’s voice faintly through the door, saying, “Guys, nobody from group number one should be in line!”

  How could they do it? How could these teachers spend all day saying “GUYS,” month after month? How do they have the stamina?

  —

  ROOM 7 WAS FULL OF FIRST-GRADERS. When I told her my name, Mrs. Lurie, the teacher, said, “He must be good at baking cookies!” They were having quiet playtime, she said, until about a quarter of three, and then they could start to pick up. “My little guy,” Mrs. Lurie said, pointing across the room. “The one with the football? Finn. Just make sure he stays focused.” She left.

  “Mr. Baker, can you do magic now?” said Danica. I recognized her from the cafeteria.

  I said, “Can I see what you’re doing? Are you building something with those blocks?”

  “Yes,” she said, “but can we see the magic thing with the crackers now?”

  “I ate them all,” I said.

  “Disappear a marker,” said Sawyer.

  I held the cap of the marker up and explained how to follow it with your eyes. “Then you say, And now, I’m going to hand it to you. And you do that—and then you do that.”

  Whoa!

  I did it for them very slowly, showing how the cap dropped in my left palm. Danica and Sawyer practiced. “How do magicians do it?” said Danica.

  I said, “When magicians want to do a trick, they practice for days and days. They practice in front of a mirror until they know how to do it.” I yawned.

  “Keep on doing it,” said Danica.

  I said, “I don’t know if I can do it, I’m tired. I’m exhausted!”

  “Do it with the whole marker,” said Danica.

  That would be impossible, I said—it had to be something that the hand can cover.

  “Mine can.” Danica fumbled with the marker, throwing it behind her, and held out her tiny empty hand, smiling.

  “Clever,” I said. I asked Eliot how he was doing.

  “Good,” said Eliot.

  “I’m glad to hear it,” I said. “I’m tired.”

  “Pleased to meet you,” he said.

  “Good joke,” I said.

  Sawyer was going around the room demonstrating the Chinese egg drop.

  I asked if Mrs. Lurie read a story sometimes.

  “She already did,” said Danica. She handed me an orange wooden block. “Do it with this block.”

  I made the block disappear.

  “Do a magic trick with it!” she said.

  “What do you mean? This is the only magic trick I know. My dad taught it to me a long time ago.”

  “Leo, go to the library!” reminded a boy.

  “Leo, you’ve got to go to the library,” said Danica.

  I asked Leo why he had to go to the library.

  “Mrs. Lurie’s testing us.”

  “Have you been here all day?” Danica asked.

  “Oh, man, have I been here all day,” I said. “Have you been here all day?”

  “Almost all day,” said Danica.

  “Everyone’s been here all day, and it is getting late,” I said. “It is time to get on the bus and go home.”

  “I hope so,” said Noah.

  I asked the kids who were listening what time of the day they liked best.

  Noah said, “I like special.”

  Danica said, “I like computer lab and recess and lunch.”

  I went over to a quiet girl, Violet. “Hi! Are you doing anything fun? Can I give you this?” I made the orange block disappear.

  Declan was leaning way back in his chair, almost falling but not quite. Adele, who had long black hair combed very straight, was drawing a computer on a folded sheet of paper, with the keyboard flat on the desk and hair fashions displayed on the computer screen. “That’s my computer,” she said. “I looked up hairstyles.” She’d drawn the Apple symbol on the back.

  Mike and Luke, the kid from the playground with KICK ME on his shirt, were spraying each other with bullets from pretend machine guns made of plastic blocks. I asked them to make a boat, a plane, or a fishing rod. “Don’t make a gun. That just gets everybody in a tizzy.”

  “I want to make a Taser,” said Luke.

  I asked him not to make a Taser. “What if you made a . . .”

  “Purple thing?” said Mike.

  “What if you made a purple thing. And after you make a purple thing, make a yellow thing.”

  Danica said, “And after you make a yellow thing, make a everything thing!”

  But Luke was hopping and bopping and shooting at shadows. “Dude, you are way, way too excited,” I said. “Take it down, take it down. Why are you getting wild?”

 
“I don’t know,” Luke said. “I was outside.”

  “He just whacked me with that!” said Danica, pointing to Luke’s half-assembled Taser.

  Declan, reading Luke’s T-shirt, said, “I put a sign on my shirt that said ‘Pinch Me,’ and people were starting pinching me all day.”

  Sophie and Madison pulled out a big box from under a shelf. In it were loops of colored plastic that opened and clicked shut. They began making a chain out of the loops.

  “You have a beard!” said Danica.

  “I sure do.”

  “Does it make your chin warm?”

  Violet came up. “You know when you use the cube for magic? Where does the magic take the cube?”

  I showed her the trick in slow motion.

  “Oh.” Violet went off to practice. This magic trick was the most successful piece of teaching I’d ever done. Thank you, Dad!

  “We’re making the world’s longest chain,” said Madison.

  “I’m making the world’s longest number,” said Leo.

  “What happened to your phone?” asked Danica.

  I told her. Then I said, “Guys, in two minutes, we’re going to have to stack the chairs and whatnot.” I read aloud from a wall poster, in a rapper’s voice: “The first thing I do is always the same. I pick up my pencil and I write my name.”

  “Do you see how long this is?” said Madison, holding up the multicolored chains.

  I said it was a very long chain.

  “It’s a necklace,” said Madison.

  I said, “It’s a necklace for a very large person, with a very large neck.”

  “We’re making it for our whole classroom,” said Sophie.

  It became even longer, and Sawyer began helping. “This is amazing,” I said.

  “Can you guys please not make it under my chair,” said Noah, who was drawing.

  A secretary came on the PA system: “At this time, please make sure all computers are returned to the computer labs. Thank you.”

  Time to clean up, I announced. The plastic chain was now fifteen feet long and out of control: wild laughter from Madison, because Sawyer had carried one end of it out in the hall. A scream.

  “OKAY, KIDS, KIDS, RIGHT NOW,” I said. “You don’t have to take it apart. You can just carefully gather it up and put it in the box.”

  I went around repeating myself. Pack it up. Clean it up. Can you clean those pieces up? Just clean them up. Thank you. Good. Let’s go, let’s clean it up. Where’s the box? Where’s the box, my friends? There’s the box! Beautiful. Sir, stray pieces. The blocks. Put that in the thing, please. Can you put that in there? Right in there. Sit down. Sit down right now. Sit down. Thank you. Will you pick that up? Thank you, sir.

  I praised the sky in Noah’s drawing. Then there was stair chacking, which went well, although I was semiconscious by this point. Finn was bonkers, so I had him take a seat in a different chair. I asked him what his plans were for the rest of the day.

  “Um, play video games,” said Finn.

  I said, “You get a little wild sometimes, but I guess you can keep a lid on it, right? Do you know how to do that?”

  He shook his head.

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Sophie squirted some Germ-X sanitizer on her hands. I followed suit. So many kids had been coughing, I was sure I was going to get sick.

  “Luke needs a motor break,” said Eliot, pointing. “He’s over there.”

  Mrs. Lurie came back. “How was it?” she asked.

  “Fine,” I said.

  “Good!” She turned to the class and put her hands on her head. “OKAY, HANDS ON TOP?”

  “NOW WE’LL STOP,” chanted the class.

  “HANDS ON TOP?”

  “NOW WE’LL STOP.”

  “Let’s get the rest of the chairs stacked,” Mrs. Lurie said. “Declan, you have your glasses.” She thanked me. “I’m all set now,” she said.

  “Thank you, guys,” I said.

  Adele ran up. “Do you like my computer?” She showed me her finished drawing of a Google Image search of hair fashions.

  “I do,” I said, “and it was nice to spend some of the day with you.”

  “Can you say thank you?” said Mrs. Lurie.

  “THANK YOU,” said the class.

  As I closed the door I heard Mrs. Lurie say, “Finn, you’re going to owe me a tack if you don’t pick up.”

  In the very warm teachers’ break room the teacher-appreciation food was still laid out. I asked if I could do anything to help clean up.

  “No, but you can eat some of this food,” said a teacher. I took a brownie.

  Mrs. Parsons asked me to stand out by the door to make sure the kids didn’t run when they met the buses.

  The children flowed out into the sunshine.

  Bye, Mr. Baker! Bye, Mr. Baker! Bye, Mr. Baker!

  Mrs. Vaughn, the ed tech from the morning, was also standing outside watching for trouble. She noticed two boys who were hop-skipping toward their bus. “Michael! Felix!” she croaked. “Come on back. Felix, too. You were looking around, saying, Boy, am I going to get away with this?” Michael and Felix trudged back to the door, turned around, and again walked toward the buses. “Kathleen! Come back, and on the sidewalk!”

  Bye, Mr. Baker.

  Bye, have a good time! Bye! Bye!

  Elijah said, “I’m going to throw up on the bus.”

  I said I hoped not.

  Bye, Mr. Baker!

  The buses started their engines, sudden snarls of torque, one after another.

  “Is that it?” I asked Mrs. Vaughn.

  “Yep, that’s the end of the day,” she said.

  Day Fifteen, complete.

  DAY SIXTEEN. Friday, May 9, 2014

  WALLINGFORD ELEMENTARY SCHOOL, FIRST GRADE

  SILENT BALL

  BETH CALLED TO ASK if I wanted to teach first grade at Wallingford Elementary School, the school where Mrs. Norris—who’d given us those useful teaching tips in substitute training class—was principal. I said yes and ate a cheese-and-tomato sandwich as I drove, drinking coffee and hoping I wouldn’t mess up in some basic way. Littler kids are more intimidating than bigger ones.

  Wallingford Elementary School was made of brick and clapboard, built in the eighties, hidden behind trees half a mile from the village. A bell tower, which held a large, visible bell taken from the old, now demolished Wallingford School in the center of town, stood near the entranceway, with an American flag on a flagpole next to it. Mrs. Ferrato’s class was in room 4—a small, neat, hypercolorful space with gray carpeting and miniature wood-grained desks and tiny blue plastic chairs and sunlight streaming in from two big windows. A large hemispherical desk was positioned in the middle of the room, near a set of plastic buckets with students’ names on them, in colors of lime green, hot pink, and turquoise. On the wall was a chart in six colors that said, “Use Your Writing Voices.” VOICES was an acronym: each letter stood for something to strive for in writing assignments. V was for “Voice”: “I show my personality in my writing.” O was “Organization”: “I arrange my writing so readers can understand it.” I was “Ideas”: “My writing is clear, focused, and interesting.” C was “Conventions”: “I show pride in my writing by editing my work.” E was “Excellent Word Choice”: “I create images and evoke emotions with my word choices.” And S was for “Sentence Fluency”: “I vary sentence length, structure, and rhythm.”

  I thought of the kids I’d coached two days before at Buckland Elementary: many of them could barely form lowercase letters, or spell, or sound out a word—much less vary sentence length, structure, and rhythm. And I remembered my own first-grade class, taught by a sweet, plump, kind teacher who showed us how to spell same and cake and run and sun and one and to and two and made us read from the D
ick and Jane textbook, in which nothing bad happened. I wasn’t a precocious reader. A month before first grade began, with my mother’s help, I’d struggled through Green Eggs and Ham, weeping over the unphonetic wrongness of the word dark (dah-erk?) but relieved and happy when at last I got to the last page and my mother as a reward made me pale green scrambled eggs and a small disk of greenish ham, which wasn’t all that green because the ham was pink, and no amount of food coloring could change that. When I swallowed the celebratory eggs I could feel in my throat that I’d been crying. We did very little writing in my first grade—we certainly weren’t able to “create images and evoke emotions” with our word choices—and although we learned how to write numbers, we did no math beyond addition and subtraction. The best thing that happened was when we were taken to a factory that made Millbrook bread, and I saw a piece of dough the size of a sofa tumbling around in a steel chamber while being poked at by kneading bars.

  At Wallingford Elementary, in the hall outside room 4, were two other first-grade teachers. I apologized in advance for the waves of sound that would probably come from my room. They laughed. “There are always waves of sound,” said one of them, Ms. Wisman, reassuringly. “They’re a great bunch of kids, and you should have no problem. She leaves great notes.”

  Mrs. Ferrato’s sub plans began with a description of something called the Clip-Up Chart, which was a row of laminated strips in seven different colors, one strip for each student. “If you spot a student going above and beyond during any part of the day, you can ask them to clip up to the next color,” Mrs. Ferrato wrote. Whenever they “clipped up,” by moving a plastic paperclip to a higher-value color, they earned a ticket toward a prize. “If there are students calling out or misbehaving, they will clip down. If they get to Orange, they owe recess.” Well, no, I thought—not today. If Mrs. Ferrato wanted to set up a color-coded system of reward and punishment, she could certainly do that, but I wasn’t going to be a part of it. I was weary of the practice of punishing kids for how they acted in the class by taking away their recess time.

  At eight-thirty, the students would begin to arrive, said the sub plans. “They should hang up their coats and their backpacks, put their S.M.I.L.E. Notebook in the basket, check in for lunch and sit in their seat and work on morning work.” SMILE was another acronym; it stood for “Students Managing Information and Learning Everyday.”