"Even if you are afraid, don't let anyone know it. Not," he added, turning to me and smiling that tight, self-contented, arrogant smile. "even yourself"
I A New Chapter in a Book Yet to Be Written .
"Time to go. Jordan," Felix said. He stood there in my bedroom doorway and looked in at me, bracing himself as if he was afraid I might throw a tantrum. I knew that even if I had, it would have been a waste of energy. He had his orders and he wouldn't disobey them, even if it meant risking his life. For as long as I'd known him. Felix had always been very loyal to my Grandmother. Mother told me he had been with Grandmother Emma and Grandfather Blake ever since he was in his early twenties,
"What makes some people devote their lives to others like that. I don't know," Mother muttered
. "Especially people as arrogant as the Marches."
Felix lived on the property and had never had a family of his own. He had a brother and a sister who were married and had children, but he never talked to us about them. We knew Grandmother Emma always had gifts sent to his family on Christmas and on their birthdays and she gave Felix expensive watches and rings, beautiful leather wallets, and once even a paid vacation to some Caribbean island. He hadn't used it. He'd given it to his nephew. He rarely took a vacation.
"Your grandmother knows how to keep the palace guards loyal," Mother had said. At the time I'd had no idea what she'd meant, but I'd seen that Ian had understood.
I always thought that was unfair. It made me feel like a foreigner in my own home, someone who didn't speak the same language. I could ask Ian to translate and explain later, and most times he did and enjoyed doing it. He liked teaching. but I still felt frustrated.
"What does Mother mean by palace guards? We don't actually live in a palace."
We lived in an enormous mansion, but it didn't look like the palaces I saw in storybooks and on television. There were no moats and high towers.
"Grandmother Emma thinks we do and what she thinks matters," Ian had told me.
"But then who are the palace Guards?"
"That just means everyone who works for her. She makes sure they are loyal and in debt to her some way or another, just like we are,' Ian had said.
It hadn't exactly explained it all to me. but I'd been able to see that Ian hadn't wanted to talk any more about it. All that seemed so long ago that it felt like I'd dreamed it anyway.
I bit down on my lower lip to keep from showing Felix my emotions. Then I slipped off the bed, and he moved quickly to grasp the handles of my suitcases before I changed my mind. He glanced at me to see if I would cry. I wanted to. but I thought of Grandmother Emma, and just like her I stiffened my shoulders and brought back my pride in full dress parade. I could hear her admonition: "Be a March. Always remember, you are a March and what you say, how you behave, what you do reflect on the whole family, even our dead ancestors, and believe me, they're listening and they're watching,"
Not wanting Felix to think I was so sad. I snuck a final look at my room. Without me and my most cherished possessions, it would look abandoned if my mother came home and peered in at it. It would become what Ian called "another museum room in the house." So many rooms were simply there for show, unused and kept spotless. They were there for guests to be paraded past to be impressed. Ian used to say Grandmother Emma wore her house the way other women wear jewelry.
"How can you wear a house?" I asked him.
"In the minds of people who see you, you are inseparable from what you own," he said. "Nobody looks at her and doesn't think of this mansion, the furniture, the limousine, all of it. Understand?"
I nodded. but I didn't. I knew when and how to push an Ian and get him to keep explaining, and when to just pretend I understood what he was saying. Would I ever be as smart as him? I wandered,
"Your brother is a very special person," Mother used to tell me. "When you get older, you'll realize just how special he is."
I had already.
"We have a few hours of riding to do," Felix said, turning to me in the hallway. I knew that was his way of asking me if I needed to go to the bathroom. In this house, under the cloud of Grandmother Emma, you never said "bathroom." You said "powder room." You went there to "do your private or personal business."
"Toilets are persona non grata," Ian told me.
When I asked him what language he was speaking, he said. "The language of survival,"
Maybe my brother is really from another planet. I once thought. Daddy acted as if he believed it.
"I'm okay." I told Felix. I had done my business in preparation.
"Good then," Felix replied and charged forward as if he was afraid I'd change my mind. I trailed behind him so silently that I felt as if I was floating away. Felix didn't look back to see if I was coming or if I was crying. I couldn't say I liked him or disliked him. We'd had so little to do with each other before this.
His short hair was all gray. There were even ray strands in his bushy eyebrows, but he was still broad in the shoulders and stood with a military posture, tall with long arms. My suitcases didn't seem to weigh anything in his large hands. He moved easily ahead of me down the grand stairway. At the bottom he paused. and I knew he was expecting my father to be out in the hallway to say good-bye. We both looked in the direction of Daddy's bedroom, and then he turned to me.
"I'll go let Mr. March know we're leaving," he said. "He must have forgotten,"
He lumbered down the hallway, put a suitcase down, and tapped gently on Daddy's bedroom door.