I Want Her Blonde

She sat down, and I sat beside her, and we talked of children.

She said — and until that moment she had neither child nor son:

"How I should love to have a beautiful baby girl born to me... but I want her fair-skinned, with blond hair."

I looked at her with the eye of a careful examiner: gray had already traced its first lines at the sides of her head, though she had not yet crossed the threshold of twenty-five; her hair was jet-black, like the hair of that "orphan girl" of whom the poet sang, immortalizing her though not himself; and she was, moreover, as dark as the soil from which she was created. So I asked her:

"Do you really expect the newborn to be a girl... and blond-haired into the bargain?!"

She found my question strange and said:

"Why not?! Is there anything to prevent it?"

I smiled the smile of one who knows the matter as it truly is, then answered her:

"Nature may object... or may not object at all. And before I settle the matter, I should like to put to you these basic questions. First: has anyone in your family, regardless of sex, ever had blond hair?"

She said, "No."

"Then: does your husband, or anyone in his family, have blond hair?"

She answered no again. So I asked her once more:

"How, then, do you want an unreasonable thing to come true?"

She was taken aback by this firm verdict, coming before she expected it, and demanded explanation and interpretation; so I began to tell her this tale of mine.

First, you want a girl... Very well. That may happen and may not, and either outcome is possible at a rate of fifty percent. That is, you have half a chance that half your wish will come true. And this, in any case, depends on circumstances — or rather on chance. If chance wills it, you shall have a baby girl; and if it does not, your affair rests with God.

To make the matter clearer to you, I shall relate the precise operation by which nature determines the sex of the newborn — so that when one of you bears a boy she will not lift her nose in pride and grandeur, and when one of you gives birth to a girl she will not shrink into herself in shame and embarrassment. For the fault in that is not hers; nor was the newborn a girl because God answered the prayer of the mother-in-law or the husband's sister. The fault, if it is to be counted a fault, is the fault of chance — that mysterious power that rules everything that passes along the paths and crossroads of life.

Before the child is born, it is an embryo. Before that, it is a cluster of living cells that multiply with time until they become that embryo. And before that state, the cluster is a single cell, composed of the fusion of two cells, each distinguished from the other by its shape, by the kind of work it performs in creating the new being, and by the origin from which it arises. These two cells are reproductive cells — that is, of the class that has taken upon itself the task of preserving the human species. One is large and is carried by the woman: we shall call it "the female cell." The second is small and is produced by the man: we shall call it "the male cell."

The female cells in a woman are alike in structure, with no distinction between one and another. Each is composed of the cell's heart (or its nucleus) and of nutritive matter heaped around that heart. In the heart are fine threads, like pieces of short rope, called chromosomes; in every reproductive cell there are twenty-four of them.

The male cells, however, differ in structure within one and the same person, and they are of two kinds:

1. A cell carrying the trait of femaleness, which we shall name "the X cell."

2. A cell that does not carry this trait, which we shall call "the deficient cell." These cells of both kinds are very small in size; each consists of a heart surrounded by a thin membrane, with a fine hair at its rear like a tail, and these cells are able to move and swim in the fluid they are in by moving that fine tail.

We now have three kinds of reproductive cells: the female cell, the X cell, and the deficient cell — the first in the woman, the latter two in the man.

The female cell (in the woman) resembles the X cell (in the man) in that each of them has a set of traits that has no counterpart in the deficient cell. This set is concentrated in a special chromosome known as the X chromosome, which is present in both of the two similar cells. When these two chromosomes come together, the similar traits come together as well, and this happens only through the meeting and fusion of the two cells mentioned. Then a new creature is formed possessing the marks of femaleness — that is, one of the fair sex. Thus the baby girl results from the blending of the X cell with the female cell.

But the matter may not proceed along this line. If the deficient cell — which carries, instead of the X chromosome, another chromosome — fuses with the female cell, we then have only one set of those special traits (that is, a single X chromosome), and this is not enough to supply the sexual traits that would make the new creature a female; hence this fusion yields a male embryo. Thus we see that the boy results from the blending of the deficient cell with the female cell.

Who, then, governs the meeting and blending of the cells in the manner we have set forth?

The man supplies both kinds of his cells — the X and the deficient. The woman supplies her single cell, the female cell, and this passive cell remains ready to catch the first of the male cells that rush toward it as a flock crowds upon its watering place. If fortune favors the deficient cell and it is the first

to reach the cell, it fuses into it... then the mother's mood sours, and the father's temper brightens, for he has found one to help him in his old age and support him! But... if fortune fails this cell, the X cell seizes the favorable opportunity, enters the female cell and merges with it, thereby bringing about the meeting of two X chromosomes and the creation of a newborn of female character. And there is no need for us here to speak of the feelings of the mother and the father!..

And now, have you learned how the boy comes and how the girl comes, and who it is that can fulfill your hope and gladden you, or frustrate it and wrong you?

She said: "Chance, or luck."

Yes. Chance, or luck, or the hand of God, or nature — call it what you will; the truth is no more than a hidden, mysterious power that rules over man in all the stages of his development, and that bears the first responsibility for his happiness and his misery, his success or his failure.

There remains the blond hair: whence does it come, and how?

We see from what has passed that the creature cannot show more traits than lie latent in the two reproductive cells responsible for its formation (since it is formed from them alone).

We said that every cell carries in its heart its own set of fine threads — the chromosomes. I shall now tell you something about these little pieces. These chromosomes are precisely built and minutely shaped; in them gather a great number of small bodies which man is unable to see, not even with the microscope. Each of these bodies consists of a latent power ready to produce in the new human being a particular trait, different from what the other bodies produce. These bodies differ within a single chromosome, and among the chromosomes of the same cell; and they may differ, or be alike, among the chromosomes of the (reproductive) cells of one and the same person. They are as numerous as the traits a human being possesses, since every trait has a special body of its own that deputizes for it and represents it in one of the chromosomes of the reproductive cells. Blond hair, for instance, has its own representative; and blue eyes, fair skin, stature, the shape of the nose, the lips, the ear, and the rest, all have representatives assigned to them. A single cell may contain all the representatives of all the traits; or a given cell may lack one of these representatives (or bodies), while another cell lacks a different one.

We must not lose sight of the fact that what we mean by the traits a human being possesses are the traits he inherits, not those he acquires — for the world of nature is wiser than human society. If a man who acquires his citizenship is entitled to cast his vote and elect a representative for himself, the acquired trait is never entitled to do so. If a man's arm is cut off — God forbid — he thereby acquires a trait peculiar to himself, namely a severed arm; but his children are born sound, without infirmity. This trait is one that no deputy or representative represents in the parliaments (the chromosomes) of the reproductive cells, and so it passes away without branding the newborn's frame with disfigurement, or weakening it, or at the least affecting its development and advancement.

But the trait a person inherits from his mother or his father, and which is thereby one of the effective factors in his development — that "citizen" trait which a man feels to be a part of his being and a member of his family, having accompanied it down the generations — that trait alone has the right to influence the coming generation and its direction, and to link ancestry with progeny. And because it is charged with that duty, it may appoint one to deputize for it and represent it. In a word: what we inherit from our fathers we bequeath to our children, with some modification at times — no more and no less. Such is nature's logic and its wisdom!..

So if the families of your father, your mother, and your husband have been free, since the dawn of their formation, of blond-haired members, then in all likelihood — if not in all certainty — you will not bear a blond-haired baby girl. But if you insist on your desire for this girl, you have no choice but to take yourself a husband from among the blond-haired. And even then, that bewitching color may never gleam upon the heads of your children at all, but rather among your grandchildren or their children — or it may never appear in your line at all.

And this law holds for every other hereditary trait.

She said, a questioning eagerness rising over her face:

"But why?!"

I answered her:

"Chance, or nature, or the hand of God, has its own regulations; it rules, and plays its weighty part in electing the representatives of the hereditary traits and classifying them — however it pleases, here too."

And I left her thinking...