Nicholson Baker: Substitute: Going to School With a Thousand Kids

“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 egg 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.