The Pear Tree

“Who are you?” The question took me by surprise. I had never been asked before and this was the first time I ever had to think about it. Was I my job? The retail position at the mall folding up behind rummaging browsers. Was I my hobbies? The charcoal under my fingernails and the smears of paint on my jeans from the weekend painting. Was I my family? My mom and my two sisters suffocating me with their neediness. Or was I my memories? The shot that rang out in the night out by the old pear tree, the night I went to bed with a father and woke up without one.

“I’m an artist,” I muttered less than confidently. I jutted out my chin defiantly, daring my statement to be questioned. Even though I hadn’t completed a piece in weeks and was going through a bit of imposter syndrome, I created art so I could call myself an artist. When the colors of the world got too bright, I spilled them on my canvas, diluting the swarm in tone and texture until it became an image I could handle.

“That’s what you do. I asked who you are.” The interviewer looked at me over half glasses. She had her hair in a professional long bob and simple makeup. She sat with her legs crossed and a notebook on the desk while she casually took notes. I wondered what she was scribbling about me. I needed this scholarship to get me into the art program of my dreams. It was my chance to get away from this town that only saw me as the poor girl who lost her father to suicide and my mother who smothered me ever since. Her name placard said, Tabitha. She didn’t look like a Tabitha.

“I guess I’m just a girl who dreams of seeing her art everywhere. I want it to speak to people. I want it to change people.” I pulled out my portfolio and thumbed through for one of my pieces. I chose a study of my sisters at play, hands clasped together, swinging each other about in the field outside our farmhouse. They were joyous figures, bright swatches of color and light that leaped off the canvas in the definition of a frolic. The sky opened up behind them with the promise of better days. The dreaded pear tree at the edge of our property was sketched out quickly, a suggested figure to take up space. I handed the portfolio to Tabitha. “How does this make you feel?”

Tabitha reached over and grabbed the portfolio. She thumbed past the picture I suggested to her to the next. The pear tree stood in sharp detail. The branches hung heavy with fruit. It filled the whole page, pregnant with an ominous presence. I cringed. I forgot that I had sketched that one in a rage after my father passed. I had stayed up late that night and watched as my father walked slowly out to stand under the tree. He stood there leaning against it alone in the dark until suddenly the shot cut through the night and through my heart hollowing out all the soft parts of myself until there was nothing left. “This makes me feel lonely. It’s so dark and foreboding. I notice this tree in a lot of your work. Is it important to you?” She waited expectantly for the sob story of trauma overcome that interviewers like but I couldn’t bring myself to launch into it. My father’s death had taken too much from me.

“It’s an old pear tree at the edge of my mom’s property. The property is very old and full of ghosts I’m sure but not any I want to talk about. I tried to capture the mystery of the subject and yes, some of the emotion attached to it, but I wouldn’t say the tree is important to me.” Tabitha waited quietly. “The tree has always been a part of the backdrop of my life. I played under it when I was little. I took naps beneath it and drew my first lines on my first blank page.” I found the sobs welling up against my will. I tried to swallow them, nearly choking. “And it’s where, “ the cry broke through, “ and it’s where,” the tears began to stream down my cheeks. Tabitha slid a box of tissues towards me. I grabbed one begrudgingly and muttered into it. “ And it’s where my Dad committed suicide.” She nodded knowingly and made a check on her notepad. “I’m sorry. I don’t like to think about it.”

“I can understand why. But you are painting it whether you want to or not. That is what makes an artist. What emotion can they pull from? I don’t want to admit artists that have no passion and have never been through anything. I want artists that have experienced a little bit of the suffering life has to offer.” Tabitha reached out to grab my hand. “Use it to paint well. It worked for me, it worked for other artists in the program, and it will work for you.”

I looked up in surprise. “Does that mean I am accepted?” Tabitha stood up to shake my hand and give me my acceptance packet. This was all I had ever wanted. Ever since I first heard about the art program two cities away, I saw my big escape on the horizon and dreamed of it every night. I thought I had to keep my pain locked away where nobody could see how ugly it had grown. But the pear tree still stood as a testament to everything that life could be with its gnarled bark and its sweetened fruit. Who was I but the girl now released from its shadow?