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.
M.E. Macuaga is a Japanese Bolivian storyteller and escape room addict whose diverse work has been published by or is forthcoming from Marvel Comics, Superpresent, Luna Station Quarterly, The Seventh Wave, Flash Fiction Magazine, and elsewhere. With a BA in Creative Writing and an MFA in Film Production, she has been a finalist in the NYC Midnight Flash Fiction Competition, the NYC Midnight Short Screenplay Competition, the Claymore Awards, and The Florida Review Editors’ Award in Creative Nonfiction, among others, and was short-listed for a Fractured Lit Anthology Prize. M.E. is honored to be supported by fellowships and residencies including Hedgebrook, Tin House, Storyknife, Jentel Arts, International Thriller Writers, Sisters in Crime, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Find her on Insta @memi_writes.