Mouse Week

I arrived in my hometown with the idea that I would visit. Like in a movie where the heroine wears a soft dress and drinks lemonade on a porch. Instead, I was led by three small nieces to see goats, trampolines, and a mysterious patch of dirt that was apparently “important.” The youngest attached herself to me like a very affectionate barnacle.

By dinner, my throat hurt. By morning, I was back on the train to Berlin, pressed against the window, thinking about my brother telling me I should be proud of everything I’ve done. I cried. Not the ugly cry, but the cinematic kind where one tear falls down, except mine fell directly onto my phone screen and opened the calculator app.

Back in my apartment — my safest place — I lay on my bed, not unpacking. My doctor was nice the next day. She wrote me a sick note like she was giving me a ticket to a secret club: The Official Rest Club.

Then there was the sound. A tiny, deliberate sound from my yoga room. I muted my show. The mouse appeared. I was shocked she was so bold. We locked eyes. She knew I wasn’t ready for this.

The internet told me mice hate coffee. I burned some in a metal bowl like I was performing an ancient ritual for the god of rodent removal. She didn’t care. She just kept being a mouse.

That night I slept badly, every noise like a shadow in my mind. By morning, there was more mouse droppings in the kitchen and on my sofa. I scrubbed everything.

I bought traps. Five of them. One caught her. I hate the idea but couldn’t bear the thought of more mice breeding in my apartment. I washed everything I owned. My neighbor mentioned a mouse virus and I imagined my obituary: Beloved woman dies of mouse. My husband stayed at the lake in Austria. I stayed here.

Eventually, I went out, bought ice cream, a bottle of pale blue nail polish, and a book. Sitting in my clean apartment, August air sneaking in, I thought: I am both a woman who needs safety and a woman who can survive a mouse.