A year after my mother dies without seeing any grandchildren, my husband and I pay a lot of money we don’t have in a Hail Mary effort to conceive. I inject my belly with hormones every day for a month, left side right side left side right side, and still it looks hopeless, but my follicles finally manage to squeeze out seven eggs that our doctor can fertilize. After harvesting these eggs from me, the doctor presents us with a photo of them, taken with a microscope. I marvel at this. They look like a plate of cookies. Seven spheres, smooth and sweet, each encircled in a band, a “wall” that my husband’s sperm had to penetrate. My eggs’ walls are quite thick. Unusually thick, the doctor says. This may be related to why we’ve had so much trouble conceiving. Maybe not, the doctor says. It’s hard to say. But the finger has been pointed. Me and my walls. No wonder.