​Tree of Life, by Joshua Wetjen

Tree of Life, by Keith Haring (USA) 1985

​Tree of Life
 
I’m done with my sunset watercolour and the class is loud. I almost get hit with a wet paintbrush, so I ask to go to the book corner. I see one with a guy in glasses and a hoodie on the cover. He’s standing in front of his painting with the vibrating babies with no eyes. He looks friendly and kind. I read how Keith Haring was gay and died of AIDS and made a lot of cool stuff, starting in the New York subways as a graffiti artist. 

The teacher has soft music on, and she puts the lights down to get the class quiet. I almost fall asleep on the bean bag in the book corner where no one will see me.

The bell rings and wakes me up and on my lap is the Keith Haring book opened to a big picture of one of his paintings called Tree of Life.

It’s funny, because the church I go to since I moved in with my aunt is also called Tree of Life. There’s loud singing and clapping, and people are “slain in the Spirit.” They pass out and the elders go over and fan them. This happens every Sunday. When I lived with my mom, we never went to church. When I said certain things, she said I should not say them in church, but I always wondered if we’d go and what it would really be like. Then my mom had to go to rehab, and I moved in with my aunt, who’s nice and makes delicious banana bread. Soon, my mom will finish treatment, then we’ll live together again, so I look forward to that a lot. The Keith Haring painting is also better than the church. I like that Tree of Life.

The next class Ms. Wilson assigns us a biography project, so I choose Keith Haring and check out three books on him and take them home. My aunt asks if I need help. All I want is big white paper and paints to make an example of Keith Haring’s work. The rest will be a report I’m typing on my aunt’s computer. It’s easy to find information about Keith Haring’s childhood and time learning about art in college and how he got the idea to start his own style by filling in the black empty subway ad posters. My aunt hugs me like she’s so happy I’m okay considering my mom isn’t around to see things like this. “You’ll have to read this to her next time she calls,” she says.

I get so many hugs from her. They’re not like my mom’s hugs. My aunt’s hugs have love in them, and she’s soft and smells like almonds, but when she hugs me, I remember my mom’s not there and inside it feels like a black subway ad all blank, waiting for some kind of art or life to be born there, like a tree could sprout or wants to, but it can’t.

I decide I should paint my own Tree of Life, but I don’t know what should go on it.

The next day I show Ms. Wilson the report I wrote already, and she says, “This is gorgeous. Don’t forget the visual!” I tell her I’m waiting to get the materials. She says that’s fine. It’s good because I don’t know yet what my own Tree of Life is. I worry that I’ll have to turn in the project before I find out.

When I get home from school that day, my aunt is on the couch. In front of her on the glass coffee table surface is an acrylic paint set and brushes still in the package and not just one big white paper page but five. I can’t believe it. My mom never had the money for things like this and when I got home from school, if she was there, she was in her room with the lights out and curtains drawn, and she was missing work from the drugs making her sick. 

The art supplies are amazing, but my aunt looks worried. She’s reading one of my Keith Haring books. I sit down next to her. She’s frowning at a picture he painted of a smiley face on a big penis. “This is shameful,” she says. “Sorry. You need to do your project on someone else.”

“Alright,” I say. My ears and face are hot, like I’ve done something terrible. 

“I’ll take these books back and talk to the librarian. They don’t need books like this for children.”

Later, alone in the room where my aunt has me staying, I’m on the floor with the paints and paper. I can remember Keith Haring’s painting, the green branches becoming people with hands waving. The tree connects them to each other and the ground—hands wave and their faces look like seeds. The people under it are yellow with x faces and tiny orange boxes sprinkled around, like they have disease invading and they’re reaching up to the tree for help, like anyone reaches up, like my mom is now. 

At school I tell Ms. Wilson my aunt won’t let me do Keith Haring. Her mouth goes straight. Then her head turns. “I forgot you’re with your aunt right now,” she says. “I can talk to her about it.” During lunch I see her pull the phone cord out into the hall. She comes out looking very serious and says, “There’s sad news about your mom.”

My mom, one of the pretty seeds on the tree waving its hands, getting sucked back into the earth. I reach toward my teacher, eyes in an X.

Joshua Wetjen

Joshua Wetjen is a  high school English teacher living in Minneapolis and working in St. Paul. When not grading or chasing my two children, he likes to noodle on his jazz guitar and try new restaurants with his wife. His work has appeared in The Pinch, Newfound and Yalobusha Review among other publications.