Maman squats down next to me, and like an injured child who desperately needs the embrace of her mother, I sit up and fall into her arms.
“I’ve been The Fool,” I say, like I’m confessing. It’s a reference to the first card of the tarot deck. Or the last card, depending on how you look at it, since every journey ends back where it began. The Fool is exactly like he sounds—foolish. He’s the madman, the jester, the beggar. The majnun. “I’ve been stumbling around, carefree, taking risks without worrying about the consequences. And I don’t know if I’m at the beginning or the end of this particular journey. I just feel lost, without a guide, and I don’t know how long my faith is going to hold out.”
Sometimes, with Logan, I’d convinced myself that I was being an adult, that we had a grown-up relationship. And with the naiveté of a kid, I’d let myself fall blindly in love.
And it had been wonderful.
But now it isn’t anymore. Now I am tangled up and twisted inside. Now I am lost in the dark, afraid to take a step for fear of walking off a mountainside.
“I don’t know what to do.” My words are muffled in the fabric of my mother’s hemp tunic, but somehow I know she gets the gist. “Tell me what to do.”
Maman rocks me gently, her hand stroking my hair. “Oh, sweetie. I know it hurts, and I wish I could tell you what—”
I know where this speech goes. I wish I could tell you what to do but I can’t because blah blah blah, personal life journey, growth. All that crap.
But before she can finish, my father, who is still looming above us, cuts her off. “You want our advice, Devi? Let me give you some advice.” He’s firm and there’s enough impatience in his tone to cause my mother to still her sway.
I hold my breath and clutch onto her dress. He has my full attention even though I’m too scared to look at him directly.
“Go back to school. You’re a learner. You have a thinker’s mind. Go to school.”
“But—” I start to deliver all my usual protests—what will I study? What if I don’t choose the right degree?
He seems to read my mind. “Just pick a major, Devi. If it’s the wrong one, you’ll change to another. And if that one’s wrong, you’ll change again. What’s the worst that can happen? Higher student loans? Are you really going to let fear keep you from happiness?”
He says it as though money shouldn’t be a factor in my decision, which is completely unrealistic. Except I can’t really argue with him because, at the same time, do I really want to let my dreams be decided by the current balance of my bank account?
Baba bends down closer to me, and his tone is softer when he speaks again. “You can’t know if your path is the right one until you completely become The Fool. You have to take that blind step to see if you’re walking on solid ground or if you’re falling off a ledge. That’s what you’re supposed to do. You’re supposed to be unsure. You’re supposed to dare, not stand still. You risk. You take chances. You figure out how to live by living.”
I swallow past the lump in my throat. “You mean: ‘You cannot travel the path until you have become the path itself’?” I ask, giving Buddha as a thank you for the perfect, perfect words my father’s delivered.
“Yeah. Something like that.” He taps my nose lightly with his finger before standing again. “And if it’s not school that interests you, that’s fine too. Just…is what you’re doing now what you want to be doing forever?”
I shake my head.
He raises a brow. “Is it leading you closer to whatever that is?”
This time I don’t say or gesture anything because I don’t know the answer.
“Well, then,” he says, as though everything’s been resolved. Then he slinks back to his backgammon board, and I know it’s not because he’s not interested in what I’m going through. He just recognizes that every fool has to make the journey alone. I’m grateful that he’s pointed out the path he thinks is right for me. I still might not choose it, but it feels like he’s given me a place to start.
My mother wipes a tear from my cheek with the pad of her thumb. “Look. Everything’s worked itself out.”
I let out a short laugh. “I wouldn’t quite say that.”
“Why not? Your father told you to go back to school. So you’ll go back to school.”
“Mom, do you want me to go back to school?” I know she does. It’s what she hints at in every Tarot reading she does for me, but it felt good hearing my father tell me what he thought and I want to hear advice from her, too.
“I do.” She’s confident with her answer, but then she adds, “If that’s what you want.”
I bite back my amusement. It’s the closest she’ll ever get to telling me what to do, so worried that she will stifle who I’m meant to be.
I love her for that. So much.
“Thanks, Mom. It’s nice to hear you say that.” But there’s still another subject I’m completely lost on. “And what do I do about Logan?”
My mother pulls back to look at me, her expression slightly perplexed. “It seems like you’ve already figured that out, haven’t you?”