Substitute

by Nicholson Baker

  “I don’t know how to write animals,” said Garrett.

  “Then just do your best,” said Mrs. Willett. “Write the letters for the sounds that you hear.”

  I looked up at the blackboard and the whiteboard, where I’d written pizza and bumblebee and butterfly and ground and peep. I was violating pedagogical principles by telling the students how to spell those words—even though they’d asked me. Only a small group of short “sight words”—words like and, out, in, eat, yes, cat, cake, and them—were exempt from the make-your-best-guess requirement. Mrs. Willett was, it seemed to me, prematurely forcing kindergarten kids to write, and at the same time forcing them to write wrong. In practice the obligatory self-invented spelling made for sentences encoded in a weird phonetic Linear B that nobody, not even the struggling writer, could parse an hour later. It made for sadness, too. Some phrases were composed almost entirely of one-letter words.

  I whisper-asked Jaydon how old the kids were in the class.

  “Five,” he whispered back.

  “Did you get animals written, Garrett?” asked Mrs. Willett. “You know how to stretch it out. Write the letters you think of.”

  “I don’t even hear any, really,” said Garrett.

  “You have to help yourself here, Garrett.”

  “How do I help myself?” said Garrett. “I don’t even know what that means!”

  “This is what it means,” said Mrs. Willett. “Say ‘ah nuh mulls.’ What sound do you hear at the beginning of ‘ah nuh mulls’?”

  Angel said her stomach really hurt.

  “Let’s check back after lunch,” I said. “If you’re in agony, then you should go to the nurse.”

  “My back hurts,” said Madeline.

  “Oh my god,” I said. “Everybody’s suddenly gotten hurty.”

  Mrs. Willett’s voice was so loud and distracting that Ava began shushing her. “Shh! Shh! Shh!” Mrs. Willett didn’t notice, fortunately.

  “Garrett,” she said. “Ah nuh mulls!”

  “N again?” said Garrett.

  “If that’s what you hear, write it down,” said Mrs. Willett. “Helping yourself means for you to stretch out your words.”

  “Z?” said Garrett.

  “No, it sounds like a Z but it’s an S,” coached Mrs. Willett. “Just one S.”

  Angel took a magnifying glass out and looked at the warped room with it. She was upset that Hazel hadn’t returned from taking January to the nurse.

  Time to wash up for lunch. “HOW MANY OF YOU WROTE ONE MORE PAGE TODAY?” asked Mrs. Willett.

  Some hands went up.

  “HOW MANY OF YOU WROTE TWO MORE PAGES TODAY?”

  A few hands.

  “I’m on my third one!” said Rick.

  “Very nice,” said Mrs. Willett. “You know we can’t lose anything, so where does everything go? Noah, where does everything go?”

  “In your folder.”

  “Yep, IN YOUR FOLDER. Jaydon, ho boy. I’m going to help you, because you’ve got a lot of stuff out of your folder.”

  January and Hazel returned from the nurse. “There was a tick in my ear!” January said, wide-eyed, to me. “It was this big!”

  “Ew,” said Mrs. Willett, overhearing.

  “They had to bend my ear to get it out,” said January.

  “And it ate some blood of her skin,” said Hazel.

  “January, you are brave,” I said.

  “I was saying, ‘Ow, ow, ow,’ because it kind of hurted,” said January. She showed me where the tick had been hiding out behind her ear, under her earlobe.

  “OKAY, FRIENDS,” said Mrs. Willett. She did the five-clap clap. “When your folder is put away, and your table is clean, you can wash your hands for lunch! Westin, that’s a messy folder. Messy, messy, huh?” She looked at me. “Good thing you sent her to the nurse,” she said, meaning January.

  Angel was in the corner holding her stomach. “She can’t breathe,” said Abby.

  “When I take a big breath, I still can’t breathe,” said Angel.

  “I’m sorry, kiddo,” I said. “We’re going to keep an eye on it. After lunch, we’re going to take a look.

  “Did she use tweezers?” I asked January.

  “No, she uses a little cup, and then she pinched it out. It looked just like a spider. It was a dog tick. It still stings right now.”

  She went off to tell Mrs. Willett about it in detail.

  “You’re cool,” Noah said to me.

  “You’re cool,” I said to Noah.

  “Well, it’s gone now, honey,” Mrs. Willett said. “You were brave. Have you washed your hands? Noah, show Mr. Baker our quiet lunch line!”

  “Mr. Baker, we have lunch in here because it’s a half a day!” Noah shouted, beaming.

  “Oh, honey, it’s not a half a day,” said Mrs. Willett. She chuckled.

  “It’s Friday!” said Noah, in a screech.

  “Right, but we don’t have half days every Friday. Just once in a while. Today you have a whole day of school.”

  Squeals and moans and more screeches.

  Westin had a loose tooth and was trying to pull it out and dance a jig at the same time. I told him to sit down for a second. When he’d gotten himself together, he took a place in line. It was 12:25 p.m. I raised my hand for silence.

  “We have to wait until the line is ready!” said Mrs. Willett. She pointed at Hazel. “Oh, you look ready. Noah looks ready.”

  “I feel ready,” I whispered. My stomach growled audibly and Abby suppressed a laugh. I told Angel that I hoped she felt better. “Thanks a lot,” I said to Mrs. Willett.

  “You’re welcome,” she said.

  In the cafeteria, Ms. Carlough, the young kindergarten teacher I’d talked to at the playground on Day Sixteen, asked me how it was going. I said it was going pretty well.

  “I had two absent today, so I only had fourteen kids,” she said.

  “It’s kind of a miracle how they slowly learn to read,” I said. “I can’t imagine how it happens. But it happens with almost everybody.”

  “Especially around this time,” she said, as we walked back to the kindergarten hallway. “They tend to bloom around April. In the fall, not as good, but by the end of the year, they seem to be doing a lot better.”

  I washed my hands and ate a cheese sandwich, and then I remembered that Garrett had left his sweatshirt on the playground. It was on the picnic table, just where he’d left it.

  Mrs. Thurston, the second-grade teacher, had lunch duty that day, and she was in a bad mood. She had her hand in the air. “WHAT ARE YOU SUPPOSED TO DO WHEN I HAVE MY HAND UP?” she said. “I SHOULDN’T EVEN HAVE TO PUT MY HAND UP RIGHT NOW, BECAUSE NONE OF YOU SHOULD BE SPEAKING. WHEN YOU CLEAR YOUR TRAY, YOUR HEAD GOES DOWN. AND YOU DO NOT TALK FOR THE REST OF LUNCH. THIS IS A HABIT YOU NEED TO BE IN. Every grade you go to does this. IT’S AWFULLY NOISY FOR A ZERO NOISE LEVEL.”

  My class was sitting with their heads down, looking sufficiently cowed and compliant. “Shall we go?” I said, after a suitable interval. We marched roomward.

  Angel said she still felt bad.

  Garrett started crying. The dark blue sweatshirt I’d found wasn’t his, and he’d also misplaced his lunch box. The sub plans said it was star share time: “The star shares something s/he brought in, then takes 5 questions, comments, or connections. The star picks out a graph from the easel bucket. You all conduct the graph.”

  Angel held her stomach, which was not small, and looked disconsolate, waiting for me to write a note for the nurse. She didn’t remember how to spell her last name, which was Deschaine.

  Garrett was having a meltdown, kicking backpacks, looking for his sweatshirt. He was sure somebody had stolen it.

  I found the nurse’s office notepad. “You have a stomachache, right?”

  �
��No, I can’t breathe,” Angel said.

  “My teddy’s not feeling very good,” said Madeline.

  January took Angel off to the nurse. Hazel couldn’t take her because she was the star, and we’d come to star share time.

  Hazel took a seat in the thronelike gliding rocker, and I sat next to her. “OKAY, SHH. This is star share. How was everyone’s lunch, good?”

  Good.

  “After lunch I feeled like I was going to puke,” said Abby.

  “Well, that happens when you eat,” I said. “Okay, Star Hazel, take it away. You can share a thought, an idea, something that you have.”

  Hazel held up her bracelet and her necklace, both of them plastic and sparkly.

  “Three questions, comments, or connections,” said Madeline.

  “No, five!” said Abby.

  Westin said, “I really like the gold ones. Not the blue ones, or the white ones, or the green. Only I like these ones.” He touched the gold hearts on the bracelet. “And I hope you have a fun time with them.”

  “Well done,” I said.

  Madeline said, “I like your bracelet and your necklace because they’re really pretty. And silver sparkly, and green, and blue, and white are my favorite colors.”

  Ava said, “I like it because it has everything’s favorite color. I like it and I hope you have a fun time with the necklace.”

  Abby said, “I like the necklace because it has blue and green on it—”

  “And white,” Westin interjected.

  “Shh,” I said.

  “And white,” said Abby. “And I hope you have a fun time with the necklace.”

  I said, “When you’re having a conversation with somebody— CAN YOU PUT THAT DOWN? And come over here?” Garrett was carrying around a cardboard tube.

  “GARRETT, STOP,” said Abby. Garrett put the tube down.

  “Thanks, Garrett,” I said. “When you’re having a conversation with somebody, you want to bring them out. You want to ask them questions about what they’re doing. Instead of telling something about your life, you ask them something about their life. So if she was talking about that bracelet, I would say, Oh, that’s beautiful, where did you get it? Or, What made you choose that color? And then she has to say something else. So, where did you get the bracelet?”

  Hazel suddenly got shy.

  “Nowhere?” I said. “Just found it on the street?”

  “You’re funny just like Mrs. Price,” said Madeline.

  Garrett was in a tiny death spiral of disruption. “Garrett, will you sit right over there next to that green chair, please, RIGHT NOW.”

  “I don’t want to,” Garrett said.

  “Well, then you’re going to have a consequence,” I said.

  “You’re supposed to put his name on a sticky if he’s being naughty,” said Hazel.

  “Very naughty,” said Rick.

  “Wicked naughty,” said Hartley.

  “He’s fine now,” I said. “He did what I asked. Just relax, guys.”

  “I wish Mrs. Price was back here,” said Hazel. “I miss her.”

  January and Angel returned from the nurse. Angel was okay. “I love you, Ava,” she said.

  I got out the graph, chosen by Hazel. “Have you ever given someone a flower?” asked the graph. Then it said, “Color in the box above your answer.” On cue from Hazel, Westin put a tally mark saying he’d given someone a flower.

  “Mr. Baker, Garrett’s talking,” said Angel.

  “Will you not worry about that? Just have a seat.” Angel was in a bad mood because the nurse had found nothing wrong with her.

  One by one, very quietly, the children put check marks saying whether they had or hadn’t given someone a flower.

  “I like this quiet!” I whispered. “I can practically hear a cricket chirping.”

  “Can my bear do it, too?” said Madeline. “Please?”

  I said she could give her own checkmark to her bear. Westin made a farting sound in his hand.

  “Do not make rude noises with your hand, sir,” I said.

  “Okay,” he said.

  “One more,” I said. “Garrett’s got to make a check. Give us your honest response.”

  I added up the tally marks. “Okay, thirteen to nothing, people gave flowers!” I said. Next Hazel was supposed to pick out a book to read aloud. There was only a little time before gym, so I told her to pick a short book. We co-read some of Hop on Pop. “We are all tall. We are all small.” Angel started screaming. There was a tiny bug in the class. “It’s a sting bug!” said Madeline. I said, “It’s a tiny little bug, just trying to find a way out. It’s not going to sting anybody, believe me,” I said. I skipped ahead in the book. “He, me,” I said.

  “HE IS AFTER ME,” recited the class. “HIM, JIM. JIM IS AFTER HIM.”

  “You guys are really starting to read! When you started this school year, could you read this book?”

  “NO!”

  “Your brains figured all this out. That’s pretty incredible.” I read on. “Three, tree. Three fish in a tree.”

  They roared it out: “HOW CAN THAT BE?”

  An unhappiness arose because Angel said that Abby said that Noah was stupid. “She’s telling me that I said stupid and I didn’t,” said Angel.

  “Guys, I want to say something very important,” I said. “Which is that I’ve watched all of you. I’m a hundred percent convinced that every one of you is an incredibly good kid. In general, you’re good listeners, you’re good workers, you’re nice to each other. Every so often, there seems to be a tension. As far as I can tell, the things that you disagree about are very tiny. If you didn’t let yourself be bothered by what somebody else did, it probably wouldn’t be a bad thing. So my suggestion is to just sort of go with the flow.” The class was listening, so I went on. “And here’s the thing that I understand about this school, that I can see. People tell you what to do all the time. Isn’t that true? All day long, you’re being told what to do. It’s exhausting. I would be exhausted. In lunch, they tell you what to do. In recess, they tell you what to do. Line up, and be quiet, do this and do that. And there’s a lot of learning you have to do. It is hard, and I understand that. I want to say, I really admire you guys. I mean it. From my heart. I admire what you’re doing.” I didn’t want them to see that I had tears in my eyes, so I looked at the clock. “And now it’s time to go to gym, where they will also tell you what to do.”

  “You’re funny,” said Madeline.

  “You’re funny just like Mrs. Price,” said Abby. She tried to hug me and made kissing noises.

  “Okay, okay, thank you,” I said, fending her off.

  We pomp-and-circumstanced to the gym, and the doors opened. “Just a jog, not a run,” said Mrs. Weld, the gym teacher. “Just a jog! Noah! Westin!” Pharrell Williams’s “Happy” came on while they ran. I used the free half hour to squirt several more squirts of sanitizer on my hands and call my wife, who’d found a dead bat in the living room fireplace.

  Half the kids were lined up along the side of the echoey gym. I said hello to Ava. “Jaydon, you may line up!” said Mrs. Gym Teacher. “Angel, you may line up. January. Westin. Garrett, you may line up. Nice job. You’re sweaty because you worked hard today. That’s very good!”

  In the hall Madeline said, “Noah was following me, and he was swinging with me at recess, so I think he loves me.”

  “How exciting,” I said.

  “Does my hair still look good?” asked Angel.

  “It’s still got some tent in it,” I said. “You look really nice.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You, too!” said Madeline politely.

  Friday folders were handed out one by one, chairs leapt up clankingly on tables, a line formed at the door.

  “Ava cut in line!” said Westin.


  “She didn’t cut, she was there already!” said Angel.

  “But she got out of line!” said Westin.

  I said to Westin, “Let me ask you, as an intelligent observer of life, how important is it to you to be number two or three or four in line? Does it matter? It doesn’t matter to me. I’m going to be here in the back of the line. I don’t care. Doesn’t matter. I’m happy. You’re supposed to walk the playground for fifteen minutes. Mrs. Harmon is on duty.”

  “Mrs. Arm?” said Rick.

  “Mr. Baker?” said Hazel. “When you wrote your name on the board this morning, it won’t come off.”

  Again I hadn’t used a dry-erase marker. I scrubbed at my name furiously. Luckily it came off, all but a ghostly residue. “I thought maybe it was going to be there forever,” I said. “Can you see it?”

  “No,” said Hazel.

  “That’s what I like to hear.”

  Ava had disappeared. I found her hiding behind some stacked chairs in the back of the room.

  I opened the door to the little playground and watched them all take off. They weren’t walking, they were running. Some were running backward. I said hello to Mrs. Harmon, who had a kind face.

  “This is an arduous day for them,” I said.

  “Oh, we make them work,” Mrs. Harmon said. “Most of our activities are morning-based, because by the afternoon, it’s too much for them. So it’s nice to have the afternoon for specials, and to kind of veg.”

  During my fifteen free minutes I went to the office to find out where the lost-and-found was, so I could take Garrett there—then I had recess duty. Without the first- and second-graders, recess was a lot easier to oversee.

  January came up with a grievance. “Mr. Baker, I asked them to stop and they’re still not stopping. They’re following me, and I’m not liking it.”

  “Dang. Well, let’s take a walk, and I’ll keep them off you.”

  “I want to play by myself,” January said, “but they want to play with me and I don’t want to.” She pointed out the two boys, who had retreated to the shadows of the play structure.

  “Do you want me to talk to them, January, or just hang out here?”

  “I want you to talk to them.” She led me toward Enoch, in a white mesh shirt and camo pants. “He’s hiding from you,” she said.