Kumar Walks Away

Of all the people in this story, Kumar is the one I think about most. Not Junior. Not Hem. Not Tiffany. Kumar. The boy who walked away. While Navid was busy processing his confused feelings and Junior was busy satisfying his appetites, Kumar did the only sane thing a person could do in that situation. He left the room. He removed himself. And in doing so, he showed more maturity than every adult in that house combined.

But walking away has a cost. When a child removes himself from a situation he cannot understand, he does not simply forget it. He carries it. He replays it. He tries to make sense of something that does not make sense. Why was his father in that room? Why was his stepmother with his father’s ex-wife? Why was nobody protecting him and his brother from this?

Kumar became the silent witness to his family’s unraveling. He did not act out. He did not scream or cry or throw things. He just went quiet. And quiet children are the most dangerous kind. Not to others. To themselves. Because everything they feel gets turned inward. Every question becomes a wound. Every image becomes a scar.

The adults in that house failed Kumar. Every single one of them. Hem failed him by bringing her secret into the family home. Tiffany failed him by not having boundaries. Junior failed him by being the worst offender of all. And Navid, well, Navid was too lost in his own confusion to notice his brother drowning.

Kumar walked away that day and in many ways he never came back. Not fully. Something in that boy closed. And I am not sure it ever opened again.