Drawing by Elizabeth Shull for Harper’s Magazine © The artist

The school gave us the eggs at the end of autumn, just as the weather began to turn, the mornings so cold we expected gooseflesh to rise on the smooth surface of the shells. The eggs weren’t very big, the size of a child’s closed fist. They were shiny and white like a rolling eyeball. We were sixteen and trusted to develop a maternal instinct overnight, to become mothers one day and contribute to the dwindling population. We didn’t know where the eggs had come from, only…