THE TROUBLE WITH GENDER

Maria's baby is well on the way in a stable one dark night.

Childbirth, thought the Roman crippled soldier, staring towards the stable where Maria and Jo-Jo had sought refuge, childbirth is such a wretchedly painful affair for the women who have to endure it.

And that's what it seemed to be. Maria was crying out from time to time, her voice filled with pain, penetrating, beseeching, begging, agonised.

She's too young to have to go through this, he thought, knowing that at twelve or thirteen she was considered to be quite old enough to do her duty for the future.

The light from his oil-lamp beacon flickered dimly into the stable, and Maria was lying on the floor on a mound of dried hay, screaming. Jo-Jo stood helplessly by, not wanting to look, not knowing how he might help. Nobody had even thought of preparing him for this.

He was a young innocent and in his mind he thought he might go blind or suffer an equally life-changing affliction if he let his eyes fall on those parts of a woman that were sacred to their sex. Even though he was old enough to have crossed the eighty dangerous miles between Nazareth and Bethlehem, guiding the heavily pregnant Maria on her borrowed donkey, throughout his childhood he had been so indoctrinated with concepts of decency and honour that he had, as yet, no real notion of what the girl's body was like. After all, he was painfully aware that he wasn't the father of the illegitimate child being born in front of his eyes, and that only added to his ignorance.

Anyway, how did one become a father? Was it a kiss? Or more?

And dark tales abounded, between lads who were equally ignorant, of the blackness of the sin if he dared to look upon what was a mystery beyond mysteries. It was even suggested by lads with sisters that girls didn’t even have willies. Instead … he shuddered at some of the tales told by others and sometimes even by himself to awestruck small boys, invention substituting for knowledge.

Yet he couldn't help himself. He had to look, the odd swift sideways glance followed by a longer stare of total fascination as the head appeared. He'd seen animals born, but never human babies and he was shocked by the similarity. Surely God had made men to be different from the creatures that dumbly inhabited the wild?

He looked again, he couldn’t help himself, and to his utter surprise, he retained his eyesight. That’s one of the dark stories that was wrong, then. One biological account that he could consign to the waste-heap of history. Like playing with himself. That didn’t lead to blindness either.

The Inn-keeper's wife appeared through the gloom, carrying some cloths and hot water. She was a bustling kind of woman, a little on the plump side, though it looked right on her, and with eyes that smiled along with her mouth when she was amused.

“There, there, dear,” she murmured. “Baby's nearly here.”

Maria gave a loud screech as she pushed, and the Inn-keeper's wife moved in to help, blocking the view so that the old soldier was left with just the sounds of childbirth. Jo-Jo staggered slightly, and leaned on the door frame. He knew two things: that he might pass out and that he must not, at any costs, pass out. The contradiction helped him pull himself together, and he remained, thankfully, vertical.

The crippled soldier, painfully, slowly, moved away, to his horse. He'd seen enough: the baby was going to be born any moment and the parents should at least have more than an Inn-keeper's wife and her husband to show their baby off to. New parents wanted to tell the world what they'd done, and he, handicapped as he was, wanted to help them. He’d go and find an audience for them. It was the least he could do.

The night was dark and the light above the stable of little help as he moved off into the black shadows of a starless night. But he found his old horse, patted it affectionately and wearily forced his broken body to climb onto its back. The horse looked at him and nodded as if it understood the cripple's pain, and gently walked away, carrying him towards some distant fields where the soldier knew shepherds were watching their sheep both day and night, ready to ward off any wolves that came to steal young lambs.

Wolves were the bane of the shepherd’s life. And they were cunning as well as being a greedy bane. The shepherds would be keeping a watch out for them even in the darkest hours of the night.

Back in the stable the Inn-keeper's wife smiled encouragingly at Maria.

“Nearly here,” she said, “One more push and you'll have a new baby. What do you want?” She asked this last question of Jo-Jo. He didn't care " the infant, when it was born, would have nothing to do with him, but he rattled out the expected answer.

“A boy,” he said. And it shocked him when he realised that was the truth. It might be a b*****d, but if it was going to be born at all it would be better if the b*****d was a boy. Boys grew up to be useful, which is more than you could say of girls, who were, he’d had this hammered into him, all daughters of original sin and thus tainted and useless.

“A good choice,” approved the Inn-keeper's wife. “He'll grow up in his father's footsteps and be a crutch for you when you grow older. My son's a good boy. When the Inn's too much for my man and me he'll take over. He's twelve already, so just about a man. He already does some of the chores. I'm proud of him just as you'll be proud of your little one " if he's a boy.”

“He'll be a … boy …” gasped Maria. “The angel said...”

“Angel, dearie?” asked the older woman. “What angel?”

“Oh, nothing,” mumbled the mother-to-be. “A dream I had, that's all.”

“Or nightmare,” grated Jo-jo.

“From Heaven,” sighed Maria, recalling the vivacious strength of the Roman captain.

“It's just a story you made up,” muttered Jo-Jo, spitefully.

“That's no way to talk to your wife!” snapped the Inn-keeper's wife. “You men are all the same when it comes to difficult things like childbirth! It'd be best if you are kept well out of the way!”

“Stay, Jo-Jo, please” gasped Maria.

“I'm not going anywhere,” he muttered, sullenly.

“Your baby's here!” almost shouted the Inn-keeper's wife. “Here, let me help you! Jo-Jo, stop being useless and hand me one of those swaddling bands! It needs wrapping up good and warm or it'll catch it's death, and then when you've looked at it and said hello you can lay it in that manger!”

She lifted the new baby from between it's mother's legs, and smiled at Maria.

“Here you are, dear,” she said, and she glanced sideways at Jo-Jo. “It's a girl!” she said, “a lovely little girl...”

© Peter Rogerson 19.11.12, revised 25.11.16