Substitute

by Nicholson Baker

  “That’s the thing,” I said. “I think it’s the side effect of the drug rather than the actual state of his own mind.”

  “Well,” he said. He waved.

  “Anyway, I appreciate the heads-up,” I said.

  Bong, bong, bong.

  A thin, smiley eighth-grader, Birdie, came in and shut the door. “Yay, a substitute,” she said. “I’ve been waiting for this.”

  Another girl, Corinne, entered and sat.

  “There’s a new kid coming, named Lorne,” said Birdie. “This is his first day in this class. I don’t know if he’ll come, because I don’t know if he’ll remember.”

  I said, “So what she was thinking you guys should do is Fast Math, and your folders have some stuff in them. Let me know if I can help in any way.”

  “Do you want me to like work for five minutes, and then if Lorne hasn’t come here I can go get him?” Birdie said.

  Great idea, I said. I asked her if Fast Math helped.

  “Yeah, it does,” said Birdie.

  “Can I go to the bathroom?” asked Corinne. She started to sign her name on the bathroom sign-out sheet.

  “Oh, I don’t think you need to sign that,” I said.

  A third girl, Zena, came in. “Sorry I’m late,” she said.

  Birdie and Zena started talking about Nelson, the boy who died. “Did you hear about that kid?” Birdie asked me. “They found him dead in the quarry.”

  “That’s just horrible,” I said.

  “Yeah, he told his mom he was going for a walk,” said Birdie.

  “His mom said it was normal,” said Zena. “He always goes on a walk. That one day he never came home.”

  “My sister knows him,” said Birdie. “He was in my sister’s grade.”

  The poor kid! The poor family! There was nothing more to say. The two girls swiveled in their chairs and did Fast Math for a few minutes. Lorne came in and allowed the door to shut with a click.

  “Lorne, how are you?” I said.

  “Good.”

  “So we’ve got Fast Math,” I said, “and all kinds of happy things.” I was starting to sound like Bill Alexander on The Magic of Oil Painting.

  Birdie said, “He doesn’t know how to get on Fast Math.”

  “I’ll set him up!” said Zena.

  “They’re going to set you up,” I said. Lorne gave me a half smile. He was curly-haired and slow-moving and handsome.

  “This seems like a good school,” I said to Birdie. “Good people, anyway.”

  Birdie made a skeptical sound.

  “You think they’re too strict, piling on the homework?”

  “The teachers are horrible about homework,” said Birdie. “They give us way too much. I wish we’d just have work at school, and family time at home.”

  “I totally agree,” I said. “As a dad, I watched my kids go through Maine schools, and it was hours every night.”

  Birdie said, “My mom gets home at four, so when she comes home I’m still working on homework. The only time I see her is when I say good night.”

  “That’s sad,” I said.

  “I know. Except for the weekend.”

  “This is the one childhood you’ve got,” I said.

  Zena said, “Mrs. Massey hasn’t set Lorne up for Fast Math.”

  “Oh, no, what will we do?” I said. “Lorne, why don’t you take a look at the riches of this folder.”

  “Oh ho,” said Lorne. He opened the folder, which contained a placement test.

  “Have fun,” said Birdie to Lorne. “And Lorne, I’m telling you right now, whatever you get wrong, that’s the worksheet you have to do.”

  “So do not get it wrong,” I said.

  “Do you want to see my folder?” said Birdie. She lifted it up. It weighed about a pound. “So do your test, just saying. I didn’t even try when I took the test, so now I have all this.”

  “May I borrow a pen?” said Lorne.

  “There’s one right here,” said Birdie.

  Zena’s keyboard began clicking as she played a bowling game in Fast Math. Corinne brought up a finished worksheet.

  “You’re all done?” I said. “Great. Do you have something you can read?”

  “I have other worksheets to do,” she said.

  “Endless worksheets in life,” I said.

  Zena threw out some gum. “Mrs. McCardle said, ‘Are you still chewing gum in school?’ I go, ‘It’s really tasty, though.’”

  “Really tasty,” said Birdie. She noticed an appointment book in a corner that Susanna had left behind. “Her boyfriend is in the next class,” she said.

  Zena volunteered to take it to the office with Birdie.

  “It sounds like a two-person job,” I said.

  “You can trust us,” said Zena. They left.

  “Can I go to the bathroom?” said Lorne. “Do I have to sign out?”

  “Technically, yes,” I said, “but I’m a substitute, so the normal rules don’t apply.”

  Corinne worked quietly. The two girls returned. “We got it to the office, safe and sound,” said Zena.

  “Do you know how to do proportions?” Birdie asked me. Her problem concerned two rectangles, one eight feet wide and ten feet high, and the other sixty feet wide and forty-eight feet high—were they proportional? I drew the rectangles for her. I said, “The question is, is sixty over forty-eight the same as ten over eight? Proportional means if you shrunk this one down you could lay it right down on that one.” We turned 60/48 into 15/12 and divided by three to get 5/4. “The point is you can simplify them to the point that you can say, Oh, they’re the same proportions.”

  “Why don’t they just say that, then?” said Birdie, going back to her chair.

  A big girl named Janet swept in. She looked at the board and said, “What’s going on, Mr. ‘Baker’?”

  “Janet, I wrote you a letter,” said Zena.

  Janet looked at the letter. “That’s bullshit,” she said, and threw it out.

  “Fuck you,” said Zena.

  Birdie laughed.

  “Hah hah hah!” said Janet to Birdie. “You fucking . . . Mr. Baker, can we put on some music, as long as it’s quiet, thanks!” said Janet.

  “There’s a ton of f-bombing,” I said, “massive amounts of it.”

  “He’s saying to watch your language,” said Zena.

  “Oh!” said Janet. She mock-tiptoed a few steps. “Okay,” she whispered. “My bad, my bad.” She turned on some hip-hop.

  “Too loud,” I said. “I’m sorry, that’s painfully loud.”

  “Turn it down!” said Zena.

  Janet looked in her folder. “What is this nonsense?” she said.

  “Fast Math,” I said.

  “I’m doing it,” said Janet. The girls all began whispering and f-bombing about someone named Anna.

  “He just said not to swear,” said Zena.

  “I said, ‘Freak you, Anna,’” said Janet.

  “No, you didn’t.”

  “Yeah, I did.”

  “Let’s not be rude, guys,” said Birdie.

  “Are you in Ms. Scott’s class?” Janet said to Lorne. Lorne said he was. “That teacher’s hot,” she said. “Those tight jeans? It’s like she has no pants on.”

  Birdie went on with her grievances. “My math teacher, Mr. Lambert, he’ll write something on the board and we copy it down, and when we need help he’ll say, ‘Look at your notes.’ And then we’ll say we don’t understand, and he’ll say, ‘Look in the book.’ And we’ll say we don’t understand the book, and he’ll keep telling us to look at our notes.”

  “I got two days in ISS from him for asking for an eraser,” said Lorne. “I was like, Hey, can I have an eraser? He was like, No, go to the office. I never got the eraser. That’s what I’m bum
med out about.”

  I asked if Mrs. Massey was into hip-hop.

  Birdie said, “Mrs. Massey is like, ‘I’m into jah-hazz, and classical blues.’ I’m like, No.”

  Zena said, “Janet’s watching dirty videos.”

  To Corinne, I said, “Thank you for actually doing lots of work.”

  Biggie Smalls came on Janet’s iPad, doing “Big Poppa.” When Biggie Smalls said, “Allow me to lace these lyrical douches in your bushes,” Janet said, “Uh, I didn’t—” and turned it down. She switched to Justin Bieber’s “Stuck in the Moment” and the girls sang along tunefully, closing their eyes: “It’s all fun and games till someone gets hurt.”

  “So cool,” said Janet.

  “Natasha is all about her tan,” said Birdie.

  “Natasha,” said Janet with distaste. “Don’t rub it in my face.”

  “It’s not fair,” said Birdie. “I’m pale.”

  “I have to go to spray tan,” Janet said. “I don’t tan. I just burn.”

  Zena looked up at the clock. “All right,” she announced. “Class is over.”

  “Thank you for contributing,” I said.

  They were gone. I played “You Dropped a Bomb on Me,” by the Gap Band at full volume. Nobody could hear me. When the door opened, I clicked it off.

  —

  BLOCK 5 WAS JUST A HANDFUL OF KIDS, three girls and two boys. “Are we doing Fast Math?” Erica asked.

  “Is there a question of the day?” asked Jacqueline.

  “There was a question of the day, but I mistakenly erased it,” I said. “Should I put it up again?”

  “No, it’s fine,” said Jacqueline.

  “You shouldn’t,” said Sloan.

  “We don’t need it,” said Jeannie.

  I said, “I don’t think you need it. You’ve got a lot of questions of the day. What is the meaning of life? All that kind of thing.”

  “What is the meaning of life?” said Erica. “Infinity pi!”

  “It was a simple division question,” I said. “And the answer was fifty-five. In Fast Math that bowling game looked pretty good.”

  “I like the ladybug one,” said Deke. “I haven’t done any other one this year. It’s like a movie.”

  “Do we have to do Fast Math?” asked Erica.

  “Absolutely must,” I said. “There’s no choice. You’re in here. I’m in here. It’s probably hypocritical for me to be saying you have to do Fast Math when I— GUYS, NO, NO, NO. No bumper cars, nothing like that.”

  “She lets us move around like this,” said Jacqueline, scooting.

  “If we need a pencil sharpened,” said Deke, “we can just be like shooooo.”

  “It’s funny,” I said. “I think to myself, I don’t care. And then I think, What would the teacher do? So then I drop the—lower the boom, and I fuss, and it’s always about the wrong thing.”

  “BOOM, shaka laka laka BOOM,” said Sloan.

  “Do we still get our Jolly Ranchers?” asked Jacqueline.

  “We need them right now,” said Erica.

  “I don’t know where they are,” I said.

  “No, they’re for Friday,” said Jeannie.

  “Ah, no, you see,” I said. “They’re for Friday.”

  “We almost got one,” said Jacqueline.

  Erica got an error message: “Unfortunately FASTT Math could not save your work. You will have to repeat today’s lesson next time you log in.”

  I said, “You can just tell her that you did Fast Math today, but it didn’t save your work. Try that. Saved by technology.”

  “Holy crap, I have a lot of work to do,” said Jacqueline.

  “I only have ten more assignments,” said Deke.

  “I might not be here tomorrow,” said Erica.

  I asked her why.

  “ISS,” said Erica. “I did something bad.”

  What was the ISS room like?

  “I don’t know, I’ve never been in there,” said Erica.

  “My brother’s been in there twice,” said Sloan.

  “I got mad,” said Erica, “and my friend was telling me to say it. I called a teacher the B-word.”

  “Bad friend,” said Jeannie.

  “She’s not that bad a friend,” said Erica. “I have no idea how to do this. Just look at all this I have to do.” She made a whimper of despair.

  We took a look. Her first problem had to do with the order of operations—i.e., Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally. “Can I write that on the board?” She wrote it on the board. “I don’t remember what an exponent is.”

  “Like squared, cubed,” I said. “One of those little numbers up on top.” I wrote some exponents on the board.

  “Can I go get a drink?” asked Jacqueline.

  Sloan’s paper had problems circled that he was supposed to do over. They involved something called the “least common multiple.” Back in the day, it was called the “least common denominator,” but times change.

  Jacqueline sharpened a tiny stub of a pencil. “This is the funnest numeracy room ever,” she said. “I think you should give us Jolly Ranchers.”

  “I do not,” said Jeannie.

  Erica was making another go at the first order-of-operations question.

  “What’s eight times seven?” I asked her.

  “Thirty-seven!” said Erica. “What’s eight times seven, people? Deke?”

  “Forty-two,” said Deke. “No, fifty-four!”

  I made my little times-table speech again. “I just want to cut through all the underbrush, and give you a word of wisdom from a survivor. There are a lot of things that they’re going to teach you in high school—”

  “It’s going to be junk,” said Jeannie.

  “A lot of it you’re going to forget,” I said. “One thing that will be useful to you your whole life is the basic times tables.”

  “You can always do a lattice,” said Jacqueline.

  “But you don’t always want to draw a grid,” I said. “All you have to do is go to Staples or Hannaford’s—”

  “Are you a survivor?” asked Erica.

  “I am a survivor. I remember standing in front of a class in grade school, and they were doing one of those spelling bees except it was for multiplication, and I didn’t know the answer, and I was humiliated. I got some flash cards, went through them, over and over again—and now, look at me. I’m a substitute teacher.”

  “Good story,” said Jacqueline. “Makes me want to cry tears.”

  “So really, if you guys learn one thing today, learn eight times seven is fifty-six. I heard four different answers to eight times seven.”

  “It’s fifty-six,” said Jeannie.

  “There you go.”

  “Seven times eight is fifty-six,” said Jeannie.

  I turned to Deke. “What is eight times seven?”

  “Fifty-six,” said Deke. “BOOM!”

  “Did you know that eight times seven is fifty-six?” said Erica.

  Deke began singing “Happy.”

  “What’s two divided by four?” asked Erica. I did it on the board for her.

  “Wait,” Jeannie said, “if you do five take away ten you’re going to get a negative, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Drop the pencil!” said Deke to Sloan. “Drop the pencil!”

  “Guys, I want to see focused focus,” I said. “Hyperfocus.”

  Erica said, “He has a pencil in his armpit.”

  Sloan dropped the pencil from his armpit.

  “Deke, how’s it going, man?” I asked.

  “Delicious,” he said.

  “You’ve got your name down, good. This is the formula. Circumference equals two pi r. The radius is there.”

  “So you do two times three point one four times
fourteen?”

  “Exactly! So just do it. Have you got a calculator?”

  “No.” He went off in search of a calculator, and then he sneezed messily.

  “That’s nasty,” said Jacqueline.

  “I sneezed and it went out before I got my arm up,” Deke said. “It was like, schwooo!”

  “Disgusting,” said Jacqueline.

  “I didn’t mean to,” said Deke.

  Jeannie shook her head. “This calculator is saying that two times seven is four.”

  “That’s not right,” I said.

  “The one is faded,” said Sloan.

  “Then I need a new calculator,” said Jeannie. “Deke!”

  “What should I do?” Sloan asked, handing in his worksheet.

  I said he should probably invent a new kind of internal combustion engine.

  “Okay,” he said.

  “No,” I said. “Learn the sevens times tables today. It only takes about twenty minutes. You know when a fly flies in front of a toad? The tongue shoots out and grabs the fly. The toad doesn’t even have to think about it. What you have to be with that seven times eight is you have to be like the toad’s tongue. It’s got to be automatic.”

  “Say ‘elephant juice,’” said Jacqueline to Deke.

  “Elephant juice,” said Deke.

  “Say it to the person next to you.”

  Deke twirled in his chair to face Erica. “ELEPHANT JUICE,” he said. Jacqueline laughed. Supposedly when you say “elephant juice” it looks like you’re saying “I love you.”

  “I want to listen to music,” said Jeannie. “But I can’t.”

  I asked her what song she would choose to listen to.

  “‘You Only Live Once,’ by Suicide Silence,” Jeannie said. She said the first lines, leaving out the profanity. “‘You only live once, so just go—nuts.’”

  Meanwhile there was trouble at the whiteboard. “Stop,” said Deke. “She’s writing the F-word.”

  “No I’m not,” said Jacqueline.

  “Nine times seven is what?” I said.

  “I don’t know,” said Jacqueline.

  “Just learn that.”

  “Why?”

  “Because if you learned one math fact a day, you would be in much better shape. Let me explain to you what’s happening. They’re loading wave after wave of stuff on top of this structure, and the structure that you’ve got is not helping you, because it doesn’t exist. If you knew the nine-times-seven layer, it could hold the rest of it up.”