Substitute

by Nicholson Baker

  “And the leaves on the trees!” said Mrs. Spaulding. “Who’s sharing today?”

  Aubrey, a wide-faced sleepy girl, said, “I get up at four, because I live at Russell Lake and I have to go to my grandparents’, because my bus stop is at my grandparents’.”

  “Man, four a.m.,” I said.

  “Why, to feed the chickens or something?” Mrs. Spaulding said. She was irrepressible.

  “No!” said Aubrey. “I have to get up because my mom has to get up early for work, and she has to drive me to my mimi’s from Russell Lake.”

  “So, Patsy, what are you going to pass around for greeting?” said Mrs. Spaulding. “You want to get one of those stuffed animals?”

  Patsy got a stuffed bear out of a blue bucket.

  “Patsy, which way do you want to go, kiddo?” Mrs. Spaulding prompted, in her I’m-being-patient voice.

  “Good morning, Ruth,” Patsy said softly, and handed Ruth the bear. Ruth handed the bear to Emerson. “Good morning, Emerson,” she said. Good morning, Clark. Good morning, Talia. Good morning, Cody.

  “Paisley, squeeze in!” said Mrs. Spaulding.

  “There’s isn’t room,” said Emerson.

  “Uh, there is room, Emerson, stop. Sh!”

  When the bear had finished its trip around the share circle, I said, “Wow, you are a nice bunch of kids.”

  “THAT WAS VERY NICE, VERY QUIET,” said Mrs. Spaulding.

  I said, “And now what happens, Patsy?”

  Patsy started to explain, softly, but Mrs. Spaulding cut her off. “We have a list of shares. Patsy, do you mind if Micah goes first? He has to leave.”

  Micah stood up. “This is my toy. It’s a barracuda.”

  “Those are some serious teeth,” I said.

  Micah held up a piece of paper. “And this is a thing that tells you all about the barracuda. I just found it.”

  “Are there maybe two facts you want to share with us?” Mrs. Spaulding said. “Can you read two things for us?” Micah hesitated, and Mrs. Spaulding took his paper and pointed to the barracuda drawing posted on the whiteboard. “You can see up there who drew the barracuda, Mr. Baker.”

  I said it was a beautiful drawing.

  “Micah’s going to be a scientist or an archaeologist or something,” she said. She read from Micah’s barracuda fact sheet. “Let’s see,” she said. “It’s a great swimmer. Likes to live near coral reefs. Do you know those big rocks that are under the ocean, that are very colorful? And he’s sleek and flexible. So he swims like he’s almost not swimming. Effortlessly.”

  Micah said, in his tiny voice, “My poppi was swimming under the water in Florida, I think, and he was scared because he saw a barracuda.”

  “Beautifully done, Micah, thank you,” I said.

  “Now sit down,” said Mrs. Spaulding, “and you get three questions.”

  “How big do the barracudas get?” asked Eric.

  “That’s something we can research, guys,” Mrs. Spaulding said.

  I said to Micah, “You know what you can say when somebody asks how big they get to be? You can say, ‘Well, they get to be extremely large.’”

  “They get to be extremely large,” echoed Mrs. Spaulding. “Second question!”

  “Do they live in lakes and bogs?” asked Reese.

  “They live in the open ocean,” said Micah.

  Dyann raised her hand. “I forgot my question,” she said.

  Glenn said, “What ocean they live?”

  “Um,” said Micah.

  “Another good question,” said Mrs. Spaulding. “There are a lot of different oceans. It would probably be, I would think, the Pacific.”

  I said, “Where did your poppi say he saw them?”

  “That’s right,” said Mrs. Spaulding. “The Atlantic Ocean? Near Florida? Good questions, guys. Nice share. So, Micah, Stanley, and Cody, you kids need to go. Why don’t you grab your math papers, if you’re not done, if she doesn’t have work for you.”

  When those three were bundled off, I asked Patsy to take it away.

  “On Saturday I get to see my brother,” she said. “Because it’s going to rain on Saturday we were going to go to Funtown but now we’re going to go bowling or to the movies.”

  I asked her if she used a big or a little bowling ball when she went bowling.

  “Candlepin balls?” Mrs. Spaulding said. “The little balls? Where you don’t have holes for your fingers.”

  “No, they have holes,” said Patsy. “Or maybe not.”

  “I used to try to go bowling with those big bowling balls,” I said. “I would fling the ball but my fingers were sort of stuck, and the ball and I would go flinging down the center lane.”

  “Micah just got a trophy for bowling,” said Mrs. Spaulding.

  Patsy told a long, inaudible story about losing at bowling.

  “Three questions, guys,” said Mrs. Spaulding.

  Donny asked which bowling place she was going to go to, Ruth asked if she was going out to eat, and Clark asked how many balls you get.

  “I think it’s three, or six,” Patsy answered.

  “It’s three for a frame,” Mrs. Spaulding clarified. “Nice share, Patsy. Who’s next?”

  Eric had a magic trick to share.

  “We have a lot of magicians in this class, Mr. Baker,” Mrs. Spaulding said. “Sh!”

  Eric pulled on a white glove and held up a Beyblade spinning toy. “I’m going to make this disappear,” he said. The Beyblade disappeared, sort of. We applauded.

  Question one was, had he learned the trick this morning, or had he been working on it for a while?

  “I’ve been working on it on the bus,” said Eric.

  What did you use to make it disappear?

  “Special magic power,” said Eric.

  What was it?

  “A Beyblade,” said Eric.

  Paisley showed us her new thing of pink lipstick. “I’m collecting them. I got one orange, one red, and this one. And here’s my book of jokes. What did the zombie like about school?”

  Eric raised his hand. “That his brains fall out?”

  “Nope,” said Paisley. “Stiff competition. Why was the monster kicked out of class?”

  Skylar said, “Because it kept on spying on people?”

  “Nope, his eyes were on someone else’s paper. And I might be going to Funtown over the weekend.”

  Mrs. Spaulding asked the first question of Paisley: Was the book a library book? Talia asked, “Do you enjoy reading?” Paisley said yes. Emerson asked, “What’s your favorite joke?”

  Reese was next. He said, “I’m not going to be here tomorrow, because my gram and gramp from Colorado are coming to visit. It’s only for two days, which kind of stinks.” Eric asked him if he was still going to play Pokémon. Mrs. Spaulding asked if Reese had been to Colorado. Jake asked what Nathan was going to do with his grandparents, anything fun? “I think we might go bowling,” said Reese. “Tonight we’re going to have clam chowder with them, with lobster in it.”

  “Will there be extra?” said Mrs. Spaulding, and winked at me. “Nice share.”

  For her share, Ruth showed a picture of her and her sister playing with a baby, and then she opened a large duffel bag and pulled out an ostrich Beanie Baby, one of a collection given to her by her mother. “I didn’t bring all of them, because I have seventy-nine,” she said. Her favorite was the ostrich; she stored most of her Beanies in a trash can in her room.

  Talia said, “In five weeks I have to get braces.” What colors? She didn’t know, maybe gold. Gold and purple? She didn’t know! Which teeth? “My four top teeth.”

  Sharing was done. I complimented the class on their ability to ask questions of one another. “Really good job,” I said.

  “So let’s see how good we can transition ba
ck to our desks,” said Mrs. Spaulding. “Put your shares in your backpacks, please! GUYS, QUIET TRANSITION! We’re going into writing. Nathan, Spenser, have a seat, come on, guys. KEEP YOUR MATH HANDY FOR LATER. PUT IT IN YOUR MATH FOLDER, so you know where it is.”

  The sub plans said, “Pass out story about the stink bug. You can read as a group or have kids work in small groups.” I passed out “Stink Blob to the Rescue,” a one-page story with two pages of questions following it. Mrs. Spaulding said that three of the kids could not read the stink bug story because they had to finish a DRA, or Developmental Reading Assessment, beginning with Reese. “Put it away, Emerson, we’re working on a writing workshop from Mr. Baker.” She winked at me again.

  “So this is a story called ‘Stink Blob to the Rescue,’” I said. “You guys can help me read. What is a stink blob, anyway?”

  Nobody knew.

  “Let’s see if we can figure it out from the first paragraph. Mom senses danger. It’s a villainous wasp—”

  I stopped, because Mrs. Spaulding was scolding Reese and I wasn’t going to talk over her. She looked up and realized she was interrupting the class. “Reese, it’s too noisy to do the DRA,” she said. “I’m sorry, Mr. Baker,” she said.

  “There are a lot of tricky words in this, by the way,” I said. “Words that are complicated for third grade. Mom senses danger. It’s a villainous— What’s villainous?”

  “Bad,” said Natalie.

  “Bad! A villain is a bad person. Often in cartoons the music changes, and the villain has a cape. He’s the bad guy. It’s a villainous wasp hovering just overhead. She quickly gathers her twenty-four nymphs under her triangular body. And then take it away paragraph two, Emerson!”

  Emerson read, “The wasp ap—ap—apreech. Apreeches.”

  “The wasp approaches, good.”

  Emerson read on, haltingly, with help from me. “Mom frantically waves her antennae. Not fazed, the wasp flies even closer. Mom turns her—tongue?”

  “Tough,” I said.

  “. . . her tough, shield-like back and quickly buzzes her wings.”

  I reread the paragraph to suture it together, explaining what the word fazed meant. “Now what happens? Patsy.”

  Patsy read, “The wasp ignores her threat and lands just out of reach. Mom kicks out her middle and back legs in another attempt to scare it off.”

  “Good job,” said Mrs. Spaulding.

  I said, “Whoever wrote this has really looked at wasps, probably through a magnifying glass. Her name is Sandie Lee. Good job.” We kept going. The bad wasp loops in the air once and returns. A baby stink bug, called a nymph, creeps out from under her mom’s body. The wasp darts toward it—but mama stink bug is ready. Reese read the next part. “Mom’s ready and silently drops her most powerful secret weapon . . . the stink blob. The wasp catches a whiff of this nox— Nauseous?”

  “That’s a new word, gosh,” interposed Mrs. Spaulding.

  “Noxious,” I said. “It means ‘stinky.’”

  Reese continued, “ . . . this noxious smell and zips away in the opposite direction. Lunch will have to wait.”

  “Great reading,” I said. “This is really putting a picture in your mind. We’ve got a battle between a wasp and a stink bug. And the stink bug has a secret weapon, which is what?”

  “The stink blob,” said several voices.

  “The stink blob! It’s a blob of horrible-smelling foul liquid that is going to protect her babies.” What a fine story.

  Scarlett read part of the next paragraph. To illustrate it, I drew a picture of the shield-backed stink bug and the wasp on the whiteboard, using green marker. “The wasp has a long droopy abdomen, and long waspy wings,” I said. “These two creatures have a little tension today.”

  Eric struggled gamely through the succeeding few sentences. “All stink bugs have a large triangular structure on their backs. This raised covering points towards their hind end and is called the scutellum.” Mrs. Spaulding talked quietly to her special student, Nell, throughout the reading, which just about drove me nuts, but I didn’t say anything—it was her job, after all.

  “So they gave you a crazy hard word,” I said, printing scutellum on the whiteboard. “This is a word I don’t know. It’s a word most grownups do not know. And when it’s a scientific word that most people don’t know, and it never comes up in conversation, sometimes they put it in italics, leaning forward, to show you that we’re being scientific. This whole thing is called the scutellum. And I think a scuta, in Latin, an old language, means ‘shield.’ It’s the shield. It’s the thing that protects that bug!” (Actually it’s scutum.)

  Dyann raised her hand, and read: “However, the stench-gob is used only as a last resort since it saps the bug of most of its energy.”

  Now that, I said, was a very interesting sentence. “This stink bug has to know that it is in serious trouble—so much trouble that it is going to use up all of its energy. It’s like when you’re playing one of those games, and your health is starting to go down. You’re going to use up all your health to make this blob of stench.”

  Dyann read two more sentences and was stopped by the word secrete. “When the young wander off they secret a scent trail.”

  “All right, here’s a word that looks like secret,” I said. “But there’s a letter at the end. See that letter E? So when the young wander off, they secrete a scent trail. When you secrete something that means you leak it out of your body somehow.”

  Kennedy read last: “If in trouble they send out a powerful alarm scent. It’s Mom to the rescue as she follows this scent path right to her nymph.”

  I said, “The baby stink bugs are wandering around, and they’re also secreting something. They’re not secreting stink blobs, but they’re secreting smell. That’s how insects, ants, keep track of each other. Dogs do that, too, right?”

  “Bloodhounds!” said Clark.

  “They’re insect bloodhounds. All right. That was fantastic reading, guys.” I turned the page. “So there’s a vocabulary activity, and I must say, these are some hard words.” They needed some review, I thought, and I asked them what villainous meant.

  “Listen up, guys!” said Mrs. Spaulding.

  “Bad?”

  “Bad, right. Saps. That’s a tough one. If somebody saps your strength, it means they take your strength away. So saps means ‘take away.’ Commotion. If everybody in here were wild and crazy, what would that be?”

  “A commotion.”

  “That would be a commotion. And you’re not. Noxious is ‘nasty,’ right?”

  Patsy raised her hand. “Noxious is like a really bad smell.”

  “A gross, nasty, noxious smell. Secrete. It doesn’t mean ‘secret.’ When you secrete something, what are you doing with it?”

  “You leak it out of your body,” said Reese.

  “Right,” I said. “You might secrete blood. When you sweat, what are you doing? You’re secreting sweat. We’re just secreting people. So give it a shot, right now. Match each word with its definition. Don’t forget to write your name at the top.”

  I went around giving hints where hints were needed.

  “Do your own work,” said Mrs. Spaulding. “Refer back to the text. It’ll all be there.”

  One question stumped several kids. “I want to take a minute to talk about one really tricky question,” I said. “It says, Explain how the writer’s style changes in the last two paragraphs. Whoa. What’s that all about? What is a writer’s style? When a writer writes something, they can write it any number of different ways. You could write about this classroom like a scientist, and list everything and be very serious, or you could be funny, you could be kind of breezy and chatty. Or you could create a scary mood. That’s the style that you use to write about something. So this question is why the style changed in the last two paragraphs. I frankly didn’t notice
that the style changed. Did you?”

  They shook their heads.

  I said, “But in the beginning, we were in a dramatic situation. Mom senses danger. The wasp approaches. Mom frantically waves her antennae. It’s drama, it’s excitement. It’s a story. And then, in the last two paragraphs”—I switched to a BBC accent—“Stink bugs range from six to twelve millimeters in size and come in various colors. So it’s much more scientific. That’s what that question is about. Does that make sense?”

  They labored at the pages of questions for a while. “Focus till snack, guys,” said Mrs. Spaulding. She warned me that snack was in two minutes. “I’m just going to step out to the ladies’ room, I’ll be right back.”

  I tried to sum things up for the class. “So incredibly enough,” I said, “you read through this story, which is filled with some seriously brand-new words—words that you never before saw, in some cases. What they used to do, when I was in school, is they would say, ‘We’ve got to pick only words that kids would actually know at that very moment, or just a little bit harder.’ This story is saying that a lot of times when you’re reading, especially in scientific writing, there are going to be words that are a little bit confusing, but that’s okay, because you can just charge on. That’s what this thing is teaching you.” I went over question 3, Why are stink bugs called the “parent bug”? While I was explaining how to skim back through the text to find the answer, Mrs. Spaulding came back and began shushing people loudly. “You have to be quiet while the teacher is talking,” she said. I stopped to let her finish with her interruption. Then I said, “What do parents tend to do? They make sure their kids are safe. They’re protective. The stink bug is unusual. Some insects just lay their eggs, wander off, and forget about it. They don’t have any parental responsibility at all. But the stink bug actually takes care of its little ones, which is an unusual behavior in insects. That’s why it’s called the parent bug. But I must say, that phrase was snuck in there.”

  Ruth was puzzled by the very first question: Why did the author write this article? (a) To explain how wasps hunt for prey; (b) to give information about stink blobs; (c) to tell you how nymphs protect themselves; (d) to give information about stink bugs.