Substitute by Nicholson Baker
“What have you learned so far?”
“Landforms,” said Jack. “Like mountains, rivers, like that. We’ve talked a little bit about culture, and we’re on culture right now.”
“You’re on culture, my gosh, you’re flying through life,” I said. “Page sixty-four, guys. Page sixty-four!”
Dennis, in an orange T-shirt, was jumping around. “Gandalf, what are you doing?” I said. He sat down.
“We’re going to be talking about migrating,” I said. “Why do people migrate? What is migration?”
“You move from one place to another?” said Jack.
“Exactly, and why would you possibly do that?”
“Like if there was a war in your country?” said Ida.
“That’s a good one,” I said. “War is horrible and nobody wants to be around it because it causes mass confusion and insanity. So you want to get your kids away from it, your parents away from it, you want to escape it. What’s another reason?”
“To start a new village or something?” said Amelia.
“Brilliant,” I said. “Like the Puritans who came to this country. They were dissatisfied with conditions in their country, they were being persecuted, so they get on a boat. And then they’re in a place that’s unbelievably cold, has no food, has somewhat hostile natives, and they think, Why did we come here? Some of them went back.”
Another hand, from Brady. “You can make a new home?”
“Maybe your earlier home was washed away in a flood,” I said. “And you think, Well, it wasn’t that good anyway, so why don’t we just up and move?”
Marisa said, “I thought only birds migrate.”
“Your parents were in Norway, right?”
Marisa nodded.
“So why did they decide to come to the United States?”
“My dad’s job moved. He works for Ambra, which means ‘ambergris.’ Ambergris is whale vomit.”
Missy said, “I want to work there.”
“All right,” I said, “so let’s fly through the chapter and see what they actually say, because that would be nice, wouldn’t it?” I read aloud from the textbook for a few sentences and came to a bit of history: “From 1881 to 1920 almost 23.5 million Europeans moved to the United States.” I said, “You can imagine: there were wars, there was hunger, there was a lot of desperation, and millions of people came here, and we said, like the Statue of Liberty, ‘Give us your poor, give us your huddled masses, yearning to breathe free.’”
“Where are we?” asked Livia.
“We are on page sixty-four of ‘Why People Migrate’ in the green textbook,” I said. I asked for a volunteer to read from a later paragraph, beginning with the word demographers, first explaining what a demographer was. Carl read: “Demographers use the ‘push-pull’ theory to explain immigration. It says people migrate because certain things in their lives ‘push’ them to leave. Often, the reasons are economic. Perhaps people cannot buy land or find work. Or changes in a government may force people to leave.”
“Excellent,” I said. “That was well read, and I didn’t know about the push-pull theory. But it makes sense. Sometimes you’re pulled to another place. It’s like magnetic attraction. You think, I want to live in New York City! It’s so much fun! And sometimes you’re pushed, because things are bad and you want to leave.”
Jack put up his hand. “Two things,” he said. “Can I read? And can I go to the bathroom?”
“Yes,” I said. “But you have to do both at the same time.” Jack shook his head and left.
A boy named Edmond read a paragraph about the Cuban revolution and the Scandinavian exodus to Minnesota. Then another kid, Gus, volunteered, undeterred by the tumbleweed dryness of the prose. “Does she want us to read the whole chapter?” I asked. “Read until we drop?”
“No,” said the class.
I skipped ahead, and asked Dawn, in the back, to take up with the Irish potato famine. She began reading almost inaudibly. “Really blast it out—sing out, Louise,” I said.
“Hunger and starvation pushed people to migrate,” she continued. “Also England ruled Ireland very harshly. There were very few ways for the Irish people to improve their lives.”
I said, “Wow, little words on the page, little sentences. That was very well read, by the way. We’re talking about unbelievable suffering and hunger and famine. And yet it’s just little sentences on a page, and we can sit here happily in our class, and say, Yes, it was kind of sad, there was a big famine, the potatoes got sick, so nobody could eat them, and the Irish starved.”
“What do you mean the potatoes got sick?” said Amelia.
“The potatoes had a disease,” I said.
“The potatoes didn’t have a doctor?” said Dennis.
“No. But the thing was that the British didn’t help the Irish. That’s the real scandal. England is an island. The Irish were starving and the British were right next door and they could have helped and they didn’t—and it’s shocking.”
“Did the potatoes have the flu?” asked Dennis.
“Yes, they did. Flu is a form of virus, right? It makes you sick. Well, there are viruses that affect specific plants, and this was a virus, I think, that made the plants sort of turn black. They became inedible.” (Wrong. I looked it up later. Potato blight isn’t caused by a virus, it’s caused by a fungus-like organism, an “oomycete.”)
Lexie raised her hand. “Why don’t they just chemicalize the potatoes to fix them?”
“They didn’t have certain pesticides,” I said. “But the basic problem is that when you plant a whole country with one kind of potato, then when the disease starts, it’s going to spread and spread.” I glanced down at the textbook. The next paragraph was about immigrants from Vietnam after the war in Southeast Asia. It was long and terribly written. “Let’s not even read the next paragraph,” I said. “In the case of the Vietnamese people who came to this country, is it push or pull? This is a tough one, because I don’t know the answer.”
“It’s both,” said Lexie.
“It’s both!” I said. “Right? There was war. We had ravaged the country. Vietnam was not in good shape. On the other side, America is rich and there’s lots to do here. Has anyone eaten at a Vietnamese restaurant?”
“No.”
“I’ve eaten Chinese,” Amelia.
“I’ve eaten in McDonald’s,” said Dennis.
I said, “That’s close, but not that close. How about over in the corner, does someone want to read about other kinds of immigration?”
“I do,” said Dayton.
“I wanted to read,” said Missy.
“You guys like reading! Is this what happens in every class? People read and read?”
“No.”
“I like talking, not reading,” said Shawn.
Dayton began reading about the nineteenth-century deportation of convicts to Australia. From there the textbook jumped to ethnic groups in Yugoslavia in the mid-nineties. Then it hopped, without catching its breath, to Moroccan and Turkish laborers who leave their families behind and work in Europe. The prose was a time-tunneling parade of disembodied terms, countries without context, and statistics. “When does this class end?” I asked.
“Eight thirty-five,” said Amelia.
“So we have to do a little more high-intensity learning and then you’re going to rip through a worksheet.”
Marisa pretended to tear the worksheet in half.
“Don’t rip it up, just rip through it.”
Lexie announced that somebody had written in her textbook. “It says, ‘Go to page sixty.’”
I quieted the class down. “Lexie has come up with an observation about the textbook. Somebody has written, ‘Go to page sixty.’”
“Then it says, ‘Go to sixty-nine,’” Lexie said.
“Okay, so somebody has m
“Oh, yeah!” said Dennis.
I read. “One of the biggest challenges to today’s nations is people migrating to cities from farms and small villages. Does anyone play Call of Duty here?”
Practically every hand in the class went up. Rafe said, “Modern Warfare Three!”
“Okay, you remember when you’re in the favela? GUYS! There’s a big, prosperous South American city. And then there’s this place with narrow streets. You’re hiding, and shooting. That’s the favela.”
Lexie said, “What is Call of Duty?”
“Lexie doesn’t play video games,” said her friend.
“That’s all right,” I said.
“In this modern world,” said Rafe, shocked.
“It’s kind of a barbaric experience,” I explained. “You spend your whole time looking through a scope and saying, ‘I’m going to shoot that guy.’ Anyway, the favela was a temporary city that grew up around the main city. So, one of the big migrations is when people think, I’m out here in the country, there’s a jungle plant here, and I’ve got a hammock, that’s about all I’ve got—maybe a few rocks—and instead I’ll go into the city and make money, maybe I can drive a cab, whatever. But instead there’s no place to live in the city, so they build this kind of shantytown, that’s made of stuff they’ve found—sheets of tin, bricks. That’s what they’re talking about in this paragraph.” I read some of it. “In the past, most Indonesians were farmers, fishers, and hunters. They lived in rural areas. They moved to urban areas—and then there’s a bunch of numbers here. What do you guys think about numbers? Somebody says, ‘Eleven million people did fourteen point five seven three!’ How much does that help? Somebody says, ‘It’s a serious problem. Eighteen point seven three people are under the poverty line.’ It doesn’t help that much, does it? It’s just a number. You know what it’s doing? It’s trying to impress you into thinking, Wow, it’s big.”
Amelia had her hand up. “I was going to say that,” she said.
“We both agree. Good.”
Livia said, “I don’t know if this is true, but I heard that the smaller the place is, the more people live there.”
“Maine’s tiny,” said Missy.
I said, “Well, Japan, for instance, is tiny. It’s just an island, and it’s jam-packed with people. Hong Kong is—”
“What about Tokyo?” said Dennis.
“Tokyo! You’ve heard about those hotels.”
Lexie said, “Yeah, they’re just little chambers.”
“They’re like bee honeycombs,” I said. “They say, ‘Okay, sir, you’d like to go to your room?’ They take you to your room, and instead of opening a door and walking in and looking out—there’s your bed, there’s the window, there’s the bathroom—it’s this little sideways telephone booth. You climb in. It’s got a screen. It’s got a bed, you can sort of sit up. You have to put on your pajamas outside, and you go in and sleep. So businessmen who work in Tokyo but live too far outside the city can spend the night for cheap in these strange hotels.”
Dennis said, “I remember watching a Scooby-Doo movie where that happened.”
“There’s nothing in China like that,” said Missy. “It’s not packed at all.”
“Well, it depends on where in China,” I said.
We spent a moment talking about the men whose job was to pack people on the subways in Japan, and Rafe found a picture of the subway pusher-onners on page 55 of the very textbook we were using. I flipped forward and came to a bar graph. “They very badly want to teach us a graph,” I said. I held open the book. “Bottom of page sixty-eight. We’ve got a pretty color, sort of a lavendery shade, and then we’ve got an orange color.”
Dennis looked at the color key. “The orange is ruban,” he said.
“Urban!” said several voices, correcting him.
I asked them what urban meant.
“Populated,” said Lexie.
I nodded. “Urban is having to do with cities. Urb. You know, urb.”
“Herb!” said Dennis.
“And rural has to do with—”
“Desert?” said Jack.
“Not enough people!” said Edmond.
I said, “Farming, outside of cities. Urban is hip-hop, funky—‘urban music.’ Urban is cities, rural is country. So when you look at this chart, what’s going on? The light orange Creamsicle color, for urban, starts off small, and gets bigger. In 1800, which is two hundred years ago, very few people were in cities. Only three percent of the people were in cities. Then by 1960, it’s a quarter, and now almost half the people are in cities. Yes, Dennis?”
“Why do people start living in the cities?” Dennis asked.
“Well, why would you want to live in a city?”
Gus’s hand went up. He stood and said, “Can I say something to the class? Just because we have a substitute doesn’t mean we can talk and be rude.”
I said, “I appreciate your kindness in saying that, but let me tell you something, guys. I want to say something. You have not been rude. I’ve really enjoyed being with you, and I think it’s been fun.”
“Thank you,” said Lexie.
“Can you touch the ceiling?” asked Amelia.
“I can jump and touch the ceiling,” I said. “ALL RIGHT, GUYS! It’s time now to do the review, really quickly.” I went over migration, push-pull theory, and Cuba—they were supposed to know about Cuba on top of every other country that the textbook had fleetingly mentioned. I told them about the corruption of the Batista regime and mobsters with cigars and Castro’s beard. And then we hauled out the double-sided worksheet, with twenty minutes left to go.
While everyone was looking for pencils, Gus came up and apologized to me for the class’s rudeness.
“There’s a certain amount of chaos that’s just natural,” I said. “Everyone who sees a substitute thinks, Oh ho! I expect that.”
“There’s a lot more talking than usual,” said Gus. “It’s starting to give me a headache.”
“I’m sorry, man. I’m really sorry.” I flapped the worksheet in the air. “THE WORKSHEET—the worksheet wants you to use your pen or pencil to explain in words why human beings migrate.”
There was a moment of confusion about which side of the worksheet was page 1, until Jack explained that the holes for the binder should be on the left. “Lexie, hold it like this,” he said.
I turned to Gus. “I’m sorry,” I said again. “GUYS, now total and absolute concentration. Why do people migrate? The push-pull theory. Write something about the push-pull theory.”
In the silence, Missy came up needing a pencil. I looked around the desk and couldn’t find any. “Just use a pen,” I whispered. “And if she gives you trouble, tell her that I couldn’t find a pencil.”
I went around the class helping people formulate half sentences about the push-pull theory. As I explained it over and over, it started to seem like a confusingly pseudoscientific term for something that was self-evident. “People are drawn to go to places that are richer or less dangerous,” I explained. Was that push or pull? Obviously both.
“How do you spell richer?” said Lexie.
Marisa slowly spelled it for her.
“It doesn’t look right,” said Lexie.
Dennis and Rafe, in the back, were saying, “May the Force be with you!”
“No more Star Wars. We’re talking the United States and the rest of this planet. Although you could talk about migration in outer space if there were space aliens.”
“There is!” said Missy.
I said, “Okay, let’s go to Main Idea B. Why do people migrate within a country?” I went around helping individual students with that one
“Eight thirty-five,” said Amelia.
I needed to get them through this worksheet—that was my one goal—and I still had the whole verso page to do. “Guys, basically, lookit, Main Idea B. It’s just a way of making you know this. It says, Although many people leave their own country for others, migration can occur within a country, too. All they want you to do is write down some supporting facts. Like, for instance, uhm—people might—”
Amelia, Lexie, and Marisa grabbed their pencils and sat expectantly, smiling, waiting to write down exactly what I said. I burst out laughing. “Look at you,” I said.
“Why don’t you give us two facts, very slowly,” Lexie suggested.
“Why don’t you give me two facts.”
“Okay,” said Lexie. “One is that McDonald’s isn’t healthy.”
Amelia said loudly, “Did you know they feed chickens so much corn that they collapse on their feet?”
“Nice going, Amelia,” said Dennis.
“That’s from health class,” said Amelia.
I said, “Let’s say you wanted to be a chicken farmer.”
“I would never,” said Amelia.
“I would never, either,” I said. “GUYS, LOOKIT. If you wanted to be a chicken farmer, and you desperately wanted to raise chickens in a nice way, so that they didn’t collapse on their feet the way you learned in health class, but instead could walk around and peck and be happy chickens, maybe you would think, Well, I happen to know that in Maine, there are these nice people who raise chickens humanely, so I’m going to go to Maine and be a chicken farmer, and be near my friends, and we’re all going to be organic together. Something like that. Main Idea B is just that you want to go places in your own country where you can make more money, or have more fun, where you can live your life the way you want to live it. Maybe there’s just not enough food in your village, so you leave and go to another place. So now we’ve got to really move.” I shook the worksheet. “The key terms!”
We worked on a sentence with a blank in place of push-pull theory. Amelia got the answer.