Chapter 2: Sara

Rev gave me this notebook to write in and I just now read through what Uli wrote. He seems to have caught the highlights fairly well, so I'll just pick up where he left off.

The labor had been drawn out, although fairly straightforward. There were no complications and happily I held my little baby in my arms. I got Martin to smile and touch the baby's cheek, although of course he was still nervous. What else would you really expect from a fifteen-year-old father? Uli meanwhile was still there at my side, gentle and wise, filling me with strength and calm, even just with his smile. I'd known him for so long by then, since I was a teenager, and with my own parents gone, sometime I felt like he was both mother and father.

Only a minute later the placenta came out and it hurt a little bit but it wasn't too bad. I let Jana cut the cord, since she'd been such a help to me those last few months, helping me when I was too big and tired to do everything on my own. I put Rev up to my breast and he latched on right away -- no problem there. Uli said something about how if hara breastfed their harlings, they'd get bitemarks. I laughed over that, remembering how his harlings had eaten meat even as tiny babies, long long before they could walk. This little one I had was so helpless. Maybe someday he would have little ones too... but would they be pearls or babies?

Agatha, finished the basic cleanup, thought of it the same time I did. What was the baby, a girl or a boy? I'd been so intent on having the baby in my arms and he'd been so cute, I'd forgotten to look or ask or anything else. "Come on, you have to let go for a bit," I told him gently, pulling him off my breast. Uli had helped me to move back on the bed, and now that I wanted to lay the baby down to look, he helped me sit up, pushing pillows up behind me.

All wrapped up in the blanket, I laid him on my lap. "So, what are you, little one? Whatever it is, you've not a worry in the world -- look at this family you've got!" Martin, Jana, Agatha and Uli were all there as I took away the blanket to have a look. "It's a boy!" Martin cried, to general agreement. A boy! We'd had no way of knowing what it would be and I'd spent many months weighing things over. Having a girl would mean at least another generation of human women, and that was a blessing, but having a boy would be fine as well. In Gimrah the boys grow up to be incepted, which as far as I'm concerned, is a good thing. I heard my own voice then: "It's a boy!"

Amidst all this, Uli wiping away the remaining stickiness from the small body, Martin counting the fingers and toes, I almost missed it when Jana spoke up. "Um, are you sure that's a boy?" she asked. She'd gotten still and quiet, and I'd thought absently that she was probably disappointed she wouldn't have a sort of sister. So I missed it the first time, really wasn't listening, but then she said it again and gently poked me. "I mean... what's that?"

She was right next to me and whispering into my ear she said, "I don't want to be wrong, but it doesn't look all like a boy to me." I looked down to see what she might mean. There was a tiny little penis of course, like any little boy I suppose. Not that I have seen hundreds of naked baby boys, but it did look like a penis. Below the scrotum was a little bit swollen, but that was just like Martin's was when he was born. Still, there was something else, a bit of redness. I took the cloth from where Uli had put it down on the bed and patted it a little bit. There was a hole at the bottom there and then, looking down more, I saw there was another bigger hole... or something.

That was how I discovered that my little boy wasn't exactly a little boy. I'd been hoping for one or the other, a girl or boy. I'd tried to decide which would be better but I couldn't. I guess my body felt the same way, making my baby, because Rev, as it turned out, isn't really either. Right there on the bed, that moment, I wasn't happy with that. I thought I'd done something wrong. Martin was even worse, once we really looked and saw. Was it his fault, because he wanted so badly to be har? Agatha didn't even know what to say and Jana was just really confused. "Is it a har? Is it a har?"

Although later he told me he was shocked, Uli, of all of us, took it the calmest. He took Rev into his arms and had a look at him. "Silly baby, you're not supposed to be har, you're supposed to be human still," he said gently. I was almost angry then, but with Uli smiling and the baby too, I didn't say anything. Finally handed him back to me and said, "Well, he's not har, I can tell that. Not that I thought he was to begin with."

"Why do you say that?" Jana asked. "He's both, isn't he?"

"Or she!" Martin interrupted.

"Or she," Jana agreed.

Uli was looking at me as he explained it. Little Rev was some sort of hermaphrodite, although a human one. It would take some tests to see exactly what was going on, but the baby certainly wasn't entirely male or female. There was one testicle Uli could feel, but there was also something like a vagina. Agatha spoke up then, asking if there would be a uterus or ovaries. There might be, Uli said. He wasn't a human physician, but he'd seen books about this. It would be some time before we'd know all the details. My little one was very special.

Looking at my baby then, I felt so confused. One the one hand, it was such a shock to me and, I admit, a disappointment. Ever since I was a girl, growing up with Wraeththu on the rise, I'd wondered if I'd ever have a baby. When my friend Karen, ten years older than me, had Martin, I had been so jealous. Women in Gimrah can have it all -- we don't have to fit any particular role and we are free. I had so many advantages in my life. I had managed to gain my own farm. I had a few human friends and a lot of hara friends too. Peace wasn't something I took for granted either. Still, something had made me want a baby. It would make me more human, I think I thought. Holding my firstborn, however, I realized even in my supposedly most human act, I'd created something that wasn't quite human.

Then there was the other hand -- remember that? Well, on the other hand, he was my baby and whatever was going on between his legs, he belonged to me and Martin. He needed us and like most babies, he had this special power to make you do things, chiefly to love him. Right away, I found it hard to resist him, even with my misgivings. Who said babies are defenseless? After a bit more breastfeeding, I handed him to Martin. "Hold him, Martin -- remember, it's not the end of the world."

It was then we settled on a name. Pregnant, I'd come up with lots of names, but even though some of them were not male or female, things had turned out so differently than I'd expected, I decided I wanted something entirely different. I thought about "Surprise" but it was too cruel. It was Agatha that first suggested it. "Revelation," she said. "That describe him, doesn't it?" We agreed at once.

Later Agatha remember Revelation is a book in the old Bible -- about the end of the world. So it turned out I'd been wrong in what I'd said to Martin -- in one way, the baby was the end of the world.

Of course that baby now thinks he's about to meet his end, but that's a different story. Let me give him back his notepad so he can finish the tale.