Milani

Chapter 1

A loud blast of music assaults my ears as I near my mother’s bedroom. I wince and push the door open, deciding knocking would be futile. Looking around the room I frown.

Bags, shoes, sweaters, pants, skirts and every other imaginable article of clothing litter the floor of the room. The anal retentive part of me wants to pick up every one to neatly fold and stack them somewhere more appropriate than the floor but I squelch the urge. Entering my mother’s domain can induce even the calmest of the calmest to overdose on Xanax. Everything is everywhere it shouldn’t be. Makeup litters the settee in her lounge and her toothbrush perches precariously atop the booming stereo speakers.

Even when I was much younger, my dad, my older sister and I used to joke about my mother being a living, breathing, walking tornado. The maids could have arranged a room to perfection just a few minutes before but Mom just had to walk through in a few seconds and furniture would fall and break in their rush to be out of the path of her sure and sudden destruction. Years later, a house full of crash proof, crack proof, mega durable furniture pieces later, my mom wreaks destruction where destruction ought not to be.

 Spotting her pile of Louboutins, I step over them gingerly to mute the stereo.

            “I was listening to that!”

            “Yeah, but that doesn’t mean the entire hotel wants to hear it too,” I retort cringing as I inspect the Bob Dylan album cover near the stereo. My mother’s taste in music will forever be questionable.

            “What did you lose now?” I ask staring as I walk around my mother’s 6000 square foot bedroom. Warily eyeing some of the weirder looking objects littering the room I pick my steps carefully.

            “Nothing. Have you seen my purple top?” her voice is muffled as she yells out at me and I wince again still trying to locate her in the too big room.

            “Which one?” I asked as I pick up the picture frame by the piano of my mother and her latest conquest. “Purple top number 98 or 99?”

            “I need it. I want to be wearing purple when I arrive in Europe again.”

            Completely unfazed by the health hazard that is my mother’s immediate surroundings, a bubble of excitement rises and I replace the picture frame, following the clatters that rifle through the suite. Hopping crazily over the items scatter about the floor I find my mother in her walk in closet.

            “We’re going to Europe? But I thought I said you wanted to stay here this summer. Oh my gosh! I’m going to Europe!”

            “It’s a business trip Milani.”

            “Yeah, for the businesswoman,” I point out, refusing to let my high spirits be crushed. “Imagine what Europe would be like for me.”

            “Sweetie.”

            “And I just might go shopping. Oh! All those art museum, the music, the food, the sights.” I rambled on and finally stand before the closet doors staring up at my mother’s long legs standing on a stool and reaching for the top shelf.

            “Sweetie,” Mom says, exasperated. “You’re not going to Europe with me.”

Gravity took its toll on my shoulders and my spirits plummeted to the ground in perfectly synchronized disappointment.

            “Oh well, we can always go next year.”

“I’m afraid not sweetie,” Mickalia says walking around me and stuffing another handful of clothes into her suitcase before fighting it shut.