I was in the middle of a perfectly choreographed dissertation as to why my husband should read Kate Chopin’s The Awakening. The breakfast table is where I spring stuff like this on my husband… it just seems like the natural place to do it… a fresh day, a fresh idea... he’s still groggy and might agree to stuff he wouldn’t agree to normally. It just works for us. Well, it works for me…Well, sometimes. This time, though, no dice. Not even the morning brain haze would convince him that this was a worthwhile endeavor "if he really, really VERY really thought about it."

"Yichi sEtiyo Tenam yelat?… Abol sayarig menetarek mn milut neger new?"

That didn’t stop me from authoritatively chating away about the concept of feminism as seen through the eyes of a middle class 19^th century white woman. He continued to eat, occasionally giving me a polite nod so I wouldn’t feel lonely. We offer that to each other… I give him the same "Oooh that’s so…interesting," nod accompanied by a few well placed polite grunts peppered in between pauses whenever he goes on about why we should buy several acres and live in the countryside. I leave the "Ha! Unless the ‘countryside’ has a Bergdorf’s and a Dean & Deluca we are sitting tight, buddy!" floating in the air, communicated non-verbally.

This particular morning, while I was choppily traversing uncharted intellectual territory about Edna Pontellier’s tribulations, I thought I saw, from the corner of my eye, a creature scramble clear across the kitchen floor and disappear under the cabinet by the sink.

Freeze frame. It took a moment to register in my mind that something just actually did scramble across MY kitchen floor.

Ho… ere ayhonim. Denial is bliss. I ignored what I thought I just saw and sucked in a mouthful of triple shot latte. My husband took in a fistful of abesha dabbo his mother had made for us. "Uh-huh," he said about my long-winded theory about the angst of a woman trying to live in a patriarchal society.

I blinked furtively, as if every flap of my eyelashes was the backspace button on my mind’s monitor. Maybe I should switch to four-shot Americanos.

Listen, this was no time for the absurd. I had a point to make.

I was about to mewezwez to a higher cerebral plateau, when I noticed the beady eyes of that darn creature I just pretended I did not see peak directly at me from under the cabinet. It seemed to be assessing the risks of what it was about to do, and before I could say "Afer merEt bila," it had scrambled… no... no... this time it was taunting me… it sauntered across the room and disappeared under the fridge! indEnesh-iiiiiiiina! Ok.. Reganesque moment… when did I see the creature and how soon can I forget that I saw the creature? But then it stuck its miserable head out and sniffed around, openly mocking me. Iyo-yo-yo! Ayn awTa ayT! There was no denying it. The creature, since I got a damn good look at it this time as it pirouetted across my new hardwood floors, was a rat. A rat! Yawm t’ibiteNaw aynet!

I stopped mid-sentence, mid-bite, mid-sip. No wayyyy, a mouse just… no wayyyiiii. I looked at my husband. He was happily molding a wefram gursha of the frfr I had made, seemingly oblivious to the crisis that was unfolding in our domicile.

I hate hysteria and hysterical women, so I gently put my coffee cup down and cleared my throat. With all the normalcy I could muster I said, " Uh, I think that was a rat that I just saw, yenE hod," I pointed out uselessly with the kind of stilt and trepidation in my voice usually reserved for admonishing New York liberals and people who listen to Kenny G in ernest.

My husband and the man I look to in times of crises shook his head in disagreement. I silently exhaled in relief. He would know! Wouldn’t he know? He watches Nature all the time, so he would know. And if he says I saw no rat, then I saw no rat!

I took a moment to chid myself. What the hell? Maybe my sister was right. Maybe I am a closet drama queen. Ha! How would I have explained a rat in my kitchen to his mother who was coming over to dinner in exactly… 12 hours… his mother who ran her house with the same sanitary standards of an ICU ward (with the assistance of three housekeepers, a cook and personal seamstress… but that argument never weighed much in her eyes). Right now I was thrilled that my husband was shaking his head no, meaning I didn’t have to face this ultimate wurdet. Oh, the humanity!

"Nah," said my husband and the man who means more to me than life itself, especially when I think I am seeing things like this. "Nah," he said, this strong man as he shifted a massive quantity of frfr from one side of his mouth to the other. "That thing was too small to be a rat, yenE qongiyE. It’s probably," he calmly opined, "a mouse."

I managed to hold on to my scant sanity for exactly one minute. Oh, excuse me… no, I’m sure his mother would know the difference. I’m sure she’ll serenely go on about her life NOT thinking that her son is married to some kelaba kliblib who’s kitchen is infested with all kinds of vermin, big and small. I am sure she wouldn’t think of saying, "ya bEt d’rowinum… zhoniss bidebeq man yageNewal! lemehonu yalew kotet... kotet new?? d’rom "atihonhim" iko biyE neber… Alakum? Biyaleu! Akalba y’hEw lijE ke dur arawit gar ynoral. Ay lijE… dehhna asadigE…mn medhanit azorechibet bakacihu…too-too-too!"

Not my mother-in-law. Not the woman who calls me international long-distance to ask if she needed to send me ye hagerachin veem to clean the Jacuzzi. "lenegeroo," she’d say… "isu yakuzi milut neger aTnt yamwamwal alu. beteleye BETELYE bedenb kalSeda. lijE eza indaigeba. ATintu esu kelijinetu sassa yale new." Ohhhh Goooooooddddd, we are talking about the same woman who disapprovingly held me back as I was about to sit on a just vacated seat on the subway… "qoi isti…," she had hissed at me. "wenberu esti tnnish yinfesibet." Not my dear amach whose obsessive compulsiveness comes with its own installment plan.

Between clenched teeth I managed to mumble something about how I would be shrilly screaming in hysteria in exactly 3…2…1…

"UUUUUUU!"

My husband remained very unmoved. Maybe I should practice shrill screaming so that’s it’s a little more, I dunno… convincing.

Can’t he see? Hey, you…! You who is at this very critical venture resting his elbow on the kitchen table and swigging from a jug of orange juice… Yes, you… demmo don’t you look at me as if I am just another frenzied chick on a major attitudinal warpath. Did I ever inadvertently indicate that I am someone who likes mice-slash-rats, especially when they’re sprinting across my kitchen floor?

Proceed to Plan B: I went into back-to-back fits of paroxysms about being gnawed to death in my sleep by this rat… no, excuse me, mouse, that will soon turn into a rat after being left to live in our kitchen, what with my mother-in-law’s dffo dabbo as its qeleb. Now before my demise in such a majorly uncool manner, can you, yenE gela, please-get-up-and-find-the-damn-bastard-and-kill-it!

Still, my husband failed to see the last fiber of rationality leave my body.

"You know… what am I? A potted plant? Not that mice eat humans alive (anchis mn aynet inqlif b’yzish new ayT iskigelish mankorafat… ere wedia), but he could attack me too, y’know."

With that salvo mewleblebing in the air that was chocking me, my husband proceeded to scrape the non-stick skillet with a sharp knife, rescuing nibblets of frfr from oblivion, examining them with due diligence before popping them into his mouth.

"Have you thought of that possibility," he said as if he had just arrived at a fundamentally profound intellectual conjecture.

I had no plan C… well, I did but by this time I was in no mood to proceed to plan C in order to get my husband to chop up the goddamn rat (as far as I am concerned it was a freakin’ RAT even as I concede to not having eaten genfo at its birth), and snuff out the very life out of it in my honor.

"Can you just get it and kill it," I finally managed to seethe.

"Ere qoi…why do I have to do it?" was his infuriating comeback.

And then, it happened. Without warning. I uttered the four words every man loves to hear from women who think they’re strong and infallible. The four words men love to hear more than, "Sure, I’m into threesomes."

"Because," I spluttered with righteous indignation and desperation, punctuated by the appropriate flailing of the hands. "Because… I'm a girl!" I spat out.

Arched brows. "Annnnnd…?" (How the hell can he pack in so much palpable triumph in just one measly word?)

I needed no prompting. "And nothing! I am a girl! I .. I can’t be catching no damn mouse. It’s…eeww! Because I’m a girl! Girls don’t do that!"

Out the window went all my words about arbitrary gender bias proclivities. With them went my promise that no daughter of mine was going to wear pink and play with kitchen sets. With that went the only Derg song I have retained…

My husband’s eyes lit up… ohhh, this was better than that time I told him I was double-jointed. He stopped chewing and let the moment speak for itself. Meanwhile, the arefa of self-loathing threatened to suffocate me even more.

But he is a sweet man. He didn’t let me suffer longer than was needed.

"I got it, babe," he said and dropped his napkin and rose to his feet. "I go now…kill mouse." (I hate that Tarzan imitation of his! I can't believe I once found it attractive!!)

"Uh…yeah. Great… thanks. I… I would help, but I think I’m coming down with a cold," I mumbled pathetically as I shuffled to the relative peace, and uninfested environs of the bedroom… .

"Woman go to bed. Man find beast and man kill beast."

"Yeah, yeah… man kill beast," I murmured inaudibly, feigning a sneeze and checking my forehead.

But remnants of my feistiness started to scream at me from deep within my womanhood… . I couldn’t go down like this… I had to fight, rise like the phoenix. I was no whimpering maiden. I couldn’t let some wimpy rat win. No, I had to win… for all the women who fought for me, for the women who will come after me… I wasn’t going down like this.

"Hey," I said, turning to my husband, slowly untying the cord on my nightgown. "You know… it really turns me on, the thought of you capturing that big bad rat and killing it. It’s very… sexy."

I watched as the glee of triumph he was just about to mekenaneb temper itself, the dancing in his eyes freeze in mid waltz. I watched as aynochu sinkeratetu as they followed my fingers toying with the very loose cord that now had a life of its own. I watched as his pupils traced my every movement.

"Oh, that m.f. is so dead, baby," my husband breathed as he bit his lower lip. I smiled and rolled my eyes ever so slowly. As I turned and slowly headed out the kitchen door, I released my hair from its neat little bun. I threw back a glance at my catatonic husband and shook my hair really loose. "This little girl’s going back to bed," I purred, the cord of my nightgown now trailing on the floor.

I never saw that rat again.

Welcome to my world of post-feminist double standards. Finally, things are equal.