I asked, What do you hope for most when you see him?

She said, I want to know if he loves me. I want to know why he left.

—

Biddy was running her school’s science fair and she had recreated a Michelson interferometer with mirrors and a laser pointer and some little mounts and a ruler and Post-it notes. She explained how she measured the wavelength of optical beams, that the tool was used to detect gravitational waves. Her deft hands adjusted the lenses and her fingers pointed to light sources. I could not follow the calculations.

She said, Don’t worry. Mam can’t either.

She was proud to have knowledge I did not.

We looked at an incubator she had set up in the living room.

Hatching eggs?

Biddy said, My friend can’t have it at home because her mother doesn’t want a bunch of Rhode Island Reds running around the house.

Mam said, I can’t say I blame her. We haven’t figured out what to do with the chicks after the science fair.

Biddy and her friend Emily often sat together staring at the eggs. One evening Biddy knelt with her lips pressed against the glass while I was reading.

I asked, What are you doing?

I’m thinking about the eggs.

What are you thinking?

I’m thinking about the yolk becoming the embryo and the heart and the blood vessels and the tail bud and the wing and leg buds, the brain and eyes.

She showed me Emily’s charts, coloured pictures of chick development. Each egg was numbered.

Why did Emily number the eggs?

Biddy said, It’s an experiment.

On the twenty-first day the girls stayed home from school to watch. We called Mam to come but she said she would leave all that birthing in their capable hands. She was going to the airfield.

In the evening we finally heard a wobbling as the eggs shook back and forth and then the first pipping of the egg tooth as the little chicks broke through the shells. Biddy had predicted numbers 9, 3 and 6 would hatch first and they did in that order. Emily had worried along with Biddy about number 11 and indeed it never hatched. The chick was turned over inside and drowned. The two girls put the eleven surviving chicks in a box they had prepared with warming lights and took the drowned bird outside in the dark to bury near Biddy’s previous pets, a goldfish and a hamster.

I asked Biddy, How did you know which would hatch first?

She said, I watched them.

Emily said, They really give birth to themselves. They just peck their way out when they are ready.

I said, I would like to do this.

Emily said, But you’re already born.

I know, I said. But maybe we are born over and over. Maybe we need to keep pecking ourselves out.

Biddy said to Emily, She always talks like that. It isn’t very scientific.

Emily said to me, You would have to be careful not to get turned over and drown.