Moments after birth, it was clearly apparent that there was a serious problem with Jacob Aaron Anthony Radway.

It was irreparable. There was nothing that modern medicine could do for his situation. It would encompass his entire life, influencing every aspect, from the major to the mundane, to his dress and speech and emotions and thought processes. He would never live a moment without being aware of the situation; it would be a permanent part of his identity and anatomy for the rest of his natural life.

The problem was that he lacked the necessary equipment to be Jacob Aaron Anthony Radway.

His father tried to numbly deny it when he heard the news over the newborn's gurgling cries. "That's not right; he's supposed to be a boy."

The surgeon, masked and covered in mint green scrubs, gave him a blank, bored look behind his plastic eye shields; after all, it was two in the morning. "That's the only one in there, son. The technician must have misread the ultrasound."

"She's a ten." The pediatric nurse held out a wrapped bundle with a pink face in the middle for Noah to accept in shaking arms. "What a little darling."

"Noah?" Makoto's face was almost pure white with fear. "What's wrong?"

He snapped out of it. "Nothing. Nothing at all. But, um, Jacob's a girl."

"What?" If she hadn't been drugged up within an inch of her life, and lying on a surgical table with her abdomen cut open like a gutted fish, she probably would have had a stronger reaction than just a confused whisper.

When they worked it out later, it was easiest to blame a sloppy technician and the last-minute change in obstetricians and medical records for the mix-up, which wouldn't have been such a shock if they hadn't been referring to the baby as "Jacob" the entire time, complete with a blue nursery waiting at home and a new entry in the Radway family tree--which would probably have to whited-out and corrected, or however his grandmother chose to fix it. There had to have been someone amongst the branches who was mislabeled by gender, too.

Many stitches and a few staples later, they had a short conference about their child before allowing Makoto to recover from surgery. Noah fumbled with paperwork as she ran a finger down her daughter's tiny face, accidentally dragging an IV tube over the baby as well. The newborn let out an indignant squawk.

"Well, what should we name her?"

Makoto's eyes were drooping with exhaustion. "I don't know. You should name her."

He started. "Me? Are you kidding? I don't know any girl names."

She threw him a look that clearly expressed that she thought him an amusing idiot, and strangely, the baby was looking at him that way, as well. The resemblance was uncanny. "I trust you. Please, though, nothing with more than one 'y', or any type of car or city name. Or alcoholic beverage."

He chewed on the cap of his pen. "We could name her after your mom."

Her eyes flew open, and she tucked the baby closer to her body; she had to keep her under her arm like a football to avoid contact with her incision. "Are you serious? You really want to name our daughter 'Imaculada'?" She shuddered. "What about your mother?"

"Maureen? God, no. And don't even suggest my stepmother."

Makoto smiled softly; the lights in the recovery room were dimmed, and the baby was warm nestled next to her. They were both falling asleep. "You'll think of something."

Noah's phone beeped; his family was here. He left Makoto to rest and seemed to float out of the room, his head muzzled with sleep deprivation and avoidance of thinking about the new set of crushing responsibilities that he had not mentally prepared for. A little boy he could handle: he was the third of four boys, and running in a pack was his natural state of being. Even his father had seemed more confident at the news of the gender, when at first he had been the most apprehensive at the news that his son was going to be a rather young father. A little girl came with an entirely different set of rules, and neither of his parents had any experience that he could draw from. Perhaps Paloma…but that would require talking to her at length, and he still was not comfortable doing that.

A little girl. What if she wanted to date one day?

What if she wanted to date men?

Men were filthy, disgusting, hormonal animals, and he should know because he was one. Maybe they should start looking into the cost of single-sex education. Or home schooling.

He found both sides of Radways taking up most of the chairs in the waiting room, laden down with coats and baggage and bearing a variety of powder blue balloons and flowers. The smell of fresh coffee wafted towards him, and only then did he realize that it was early in the morning. As soon as he walked in the room, everyone jumped up and screamed.

Just as predicted, Noah's mother was the first to rush and embrace him, her eyes tired and red. "Oh my God, sweetie, how is he? When can we see him?"

Noah's older brother Jacob, one third of his child's namesake, was slapping him on the back hard enough to sting. "Hey, Dad! When do we get to meet the little guy?" Anthony, the oldest, playfully punched him a few times in the stomach.

He struggled with his voice as his Aunt June rushed up and hugged him against her gigantic bosom. "Um, everyone, there's something, um..."

Perhaps it was his face that tipped them off; his father was the first to notice. "What's wrong, son?"

"Um."

Noah's mother grabbed his arm, her face falling like a tumbling landslide. "Oh God, oh no, what happened? Is it Jacob? What's wrong with him? Is Makoto all right?" Behind her, his grandmother quickly blessed herself and kissed her fingers.

Every eye was on him, and Noah ran a hand through his disheveled hair before dropping the bomb. "The baby's a girl."

For a moment, no one spoke, until his stepsister finally broke the silence with the aplomb of a bowling ball through a car windshield. "You're fucking kidding."

"Monalisa," her mother—Noah's stepmother—scolded, and turned back to him. "Really? What a—ho boy, what a surprise! We didn't see this coming, that's for sure; but well, what does it matter? A little girl is perfect, too! How is she?"

The rest of the room was still shocked into immobility when he accepted Paloma's hug. His brothers glanced guiltily at the "It's A Boy!" balloons they had tied to the arm of a chair, especially the one that measured about two feet across and was shaped like Thomas the Tank Engine. There was an arrangement of blue spray painted carnations on a side table, and his other stepsister Claudemonet had just stepped out of the elevator with a basket crammed full of baby blue layette items. She held it up like a heavyweight championship belt. "Heeeey! Look what I got for Jacob! Where is he?"

His mother's face was still frozen in shock. "But I had the Tiffany rattle monogrammed! And the receiving blanket…and the bassinet is blue, too…"

Noah's father made a face at his ex-wife. "Does it really matter that much, Maureen?"

"Of course it matters! It matters because—well, what are you naming her sweetie?" By the look on her face, she was clearly hoping for something that could still salvage the "J.A.A.R." on the monogrammed rattle.

"We don't know yet." Somewhere behind him, he could hear his brothers snickering. "We have to think of something."

Paloma waved off that information, as if the child's permanent moniker was but a minor detail. Unusual for a woman who had named her daughters what she did. "That's fine, that's fine. How's Makoto? Is she OK?"

"Yeah, yeah," Noah said, running his hand through his hair again. "She's fine, she's resting. Um." He couldn't stand all the focus on him; unlike Jacob, he never actively fought for attention in his family. "Do you want to see the baby?"

"No, you idiot, we want to sit here all day and listen to Mom freak out about monogrammed rattles." Anthony dropped his coat into his girlfriend's lap. "Let's meet the little guy—er, girl."

The baby was asleep in the plastic bassinet next to her sleeping mother's bed, and a card had been taped to the front that listed her birth date, time, and height and weight, and printed at the top with "Baby Girl Radway" in black marker. Noah carefully wheeled the bassinet out to the waiting room, his eyes focused on his daughter's slumbering form the entire time. Who knew that ears could be so tiny, he thought, feeling like he had just discovered a new planet or species or something. He wanted to touch one just to prove to himself that it was real, but if he accidentally woke her, she might cry, and the thought of doing that filled him with cold terror. He prayed that his apprehension wore off by the time they had to take her home; otherwise he was ready to turn in his Daddy Card and look into becoming a monk in Tibet.

Any misgivings his family had about the new revelation melted away when the bassinet arrived in the waiting room. The celebration was certainly quieter, and to Noah, it was a rapid introduction to the difference that a single chromosome made.

"She looks like…not you," Jacob supplied helpfully, carefully stroking the top of the baby's head.

Aaron, the youngest Radway brother, had to fight to squeeze between the family members to get a glimpse of his niece. "Yeah, she does. I think she does."

Before--back when he was still a stupid kid with no responsibilities and not a care in the world besides what and where to drink that weekend--Noah would have scoffed at Aaron and probably hit him, but at this moment he was grateful for the affirmation, even if it was coming from a kid brother barely out of high school.

His family didn't seem to want to leave. Noah checked on his wife several times, once finding her with Paloma sitting at the end of her bed and pulling a pair of socks onto Makoto's feet. "Did you think of a name yet?" she asked him quietly.

"You have to help me," he pleaded. A sixty-minute nap had done nothing to clear his head, and he was growing tired of the lively suggestions that were tossed him at the average of one a second. So far the dumbest idea had been "Molly", after his ex-girlfriend, and he had Anthony to thank for that gem. "At least do her middle name. I'll even let Imaculada slide in for that."

Makoto shook her head. "I love my mother, but if she were alive, she would wring my neck for sticking my baby with that. She hated her name."

"I think it's nice," Paloma said mildly, adjusting the blankets over Makoto's legs. Noah resisted the urge to scream that her opinion had no merit, considering that she named her own daughter "Claudemonet" but she was being rather tolerable, and Makoto had always liked her.

Noah yawned and wondered where he could procure more coffee as he picked up the paperwork again. "I have something in mind."

Makoto winced as she moved into a more comfortable position. "Oh good, as long as it's not Isabel, or anything that sounds like it. My ex-boyfriend dumped me for a puta with that name, that useless scumbag."

He hastily crossed the "I" and "s" off the form he was filling out and was back to square one.

He had another visitor around mid-morning, one most welcome, because of the coffee he was bearing. "Congratulations!" He grabbed Noah in a one-armed hug and pressed the Starbucks cup against his chest. "How you doing, Dad?"

Noah turned his weary eyes up to Jason. "Are you ready for this?"

Jason was very good with children, including those who were very formerly fetuses. He wasn't intimidated when the baby started wailing, but instinctively switched her to lie against his shoulder and made hushing noises until she calmed down. Noah nearly suggested that Jason should go home with his wife and child instead of himself when they were ready to check out. Makoto watched Jason gently rock her daughter back to sleep with a beatific smile on her face. "She likes you, Jason."

He winked at her. "All girls do. Did you know that my parents thought Mina was going to be a boy, too?"

Noah hadn't known. "Really?"

"Yeah, they had a name for her and everything. I was super-pissed; I thought I was getting a brother. I think I even threw a snotty little kid fit over it. Well, anyway, that's why they named her after our grandmother. They needed a girl name, and fast."

Noah turned to face Makoto. "Want to name her after Mina?"

She shook her head. "No. And her name is actually 'Philomena'."

"Really? Yuck." It was hard to associate the knockout blonde with a name that reminded him of an old lady knitting. "What about Raye?"

"Don't give her the satisfaction," Jason said, rubbing the baby's tiny back. His hand nearly covered her entire body; she was a bit on the runty side, Noah mused. "Plus she hates her name—both of them, I guess. She shits bricks whenever someone calls her 'Rachel'."

With that, Noah gave up and chucked the whole pile of paperwork aside. "I'm officially out of fucking ideas." He groaned and rubbed his burning, dry eyes with the back of one hand.

"Hey man, watch your language in front of the kid," Jason chided, reaching up to cover the baby's tiny ears. "They pick up on that kind of shit."

"Jason, she's less than a day old. She hasn't even learned she has toes yet."

Jason gave him a long look, then bent down and slid the infant back into Makoto's arms. "Want to get out of here for awhile? Get some food or something? Maybe try to get that car seat in?"

That proposition actually sounded pretty good. "How about coffee?"

"Can I come?' Makoto joked, tucking the baby under her arm and adjusting the neckline of her onesie. She was already making it look easy. "Keep thinking of names. Can you help him, Jason?"

"I'll try my best."

They found Aaron near the elevators, trying to jam a dollar bill in a soda machine and having it repeatedly spit back out at him. Jason clapped him on the back and started dragging him away. "We have a mission, kid. You're coming with us."

Aaron momentarily sputtered but agreed. "I, um, have to tell my mom where I'm going."

"Text her. Come on. Do you have a license?"

He bristled. "Yeah. I'm eighteen!"

"Good, you're driving. Noah, we're taking your car."

Twenty minutes later, Noah was nervously riding shotgun while his younger brother wove the 4Runner through the highway traffic. Jason dug through the piles of trash in the backseat. "Noah, your fucking car, man."

"I've been busy."

"Too busy to throw away Dunkin' Donut cups? I think there's mold in this one. And you were going to drive the baby home in this?"

His stomach clenched at the thought. He really should have cleaned out the car. "Shut up and keep looking."

Jason threw aside a CD. "You know, for a white boy, you have the biggest hip-hop collection I've ever seen."

"You act like you don't know this already."

"I thought you'd eventually grow out of it. Pearl Jam doesn't help us much, unless you want to name her 'Pearl'."

"Sounds like a stripper," Noah grunted.

"It does."

"Shut up and watch the road, Aaron. What else you got?"

Jason flipped another CD case over and read the track list. "Rose, Sugaree, Delilah, Sugar, China Cat…OK, forget the Dead for any suggestions. How about…Debbie?"

"As in, Debbie Harry?"

"Yes."

"No."

"Fine then. Uh, Sandy, Cherie, Lita, Jackie, or Joan?"

Noah paused. "Say those again?"

"Sandy, Cherie, Lita, Jackie, Joan. And if you want to count future and past members, add Micki, Vickie and Laurie."

Aaron cut across two lanes without signaling. "I like Lita."

"Lita?" Noah echoed. "Huh. Not bad."

Jason kicked a pile of rubbish on the floor of the car. "Although man, can you think of Lita Ford without getting turned on?"

Noah rubbed his forehead. "After that, no. Keep going."

"I'm going. What about 'Kimberly'? I like that one."

Aaron piped up again. "I went to school with two Kims. They're both sluts."

"No slut names," Noah insisted. "In fact, everyone mentally catalogue every easy girl that you know of, think of her name, and then cross her name off the list."

"That eliminates like ninety percent of what I can think of," Aaron said.

Noah opened his eyes and glanced over at his younger brother. "What kind of girls are you hanging out with?"

"Obviously the easy ones," Jason said from the backseat. "We'll have another Radway-daddy soon if we're not careful. Should I just start throwing some out there?"

"Yeah, I guess. We've got nothing else."

"Lauren?"

"Aaron?"

"Three Laurens, but only two are sluts. One has her boobs showing on myspace."

"Never mind. Keep going, Jace."

"Cristina?"

That was Makoto's old Sugar name. "No!"

Jason rifled around for more CDs. "You've got a Taylor Swift CD back here."

"It's Makoto's," he said hurriedly. "And no."

"Jennifer?"

"Mom would like that," Aaron said. "She can keep the monogram."

"Screw the monogram. Jason, just go through everything you can find back there and call them off."

"You got it." Jason picked up a pile and started flipping through them again. "Gwen, Norah, Katie, Lily, Rihanna, Jessica, Donna, Karen, Snoop Doggy Dogg, Common, Raekwon, Ludacris, Ghostface Killah, Method Man, Steely Dan." He stopped. "I didn't know you liked Steely Dan."

"I don't. I think it's my Dad's."

"Huh." Jason flipped it over and began reading. "You should listen to this one, it's not bad."

"You and I have very different musical tastes."

"I've noticed."

Noah was still grousing as they pulled into the parking lot of Panera Bread. "Makoto says that Panera tastes like high fructose corn shit."

"It does, but they have bagels. I'll buy."

They purchased some starch and caffeine and regrouped at a hard plastic table. Jason bit into a bagel loaded with cream cheese like it was his last meal and talked around the mouthful. "Hey, what about 'Molly'? Or would that be weird?"

Noah didn't even bother to respond to that one.

Jason swallowed. "OK, so what's preventing us from just naming the kid already? I mean, let's just pick a name, anything, am I right? Do you guys care that much about it being meaningful and unique or do you just want to pick something that sounds nice and get it over with?"

Noah lowered his head and stared at the pattern of poppy seeds spilling across the plastic plate. Jason was right; this really shouldn't be such a difficult decision. "Here's what sucks: Jacob was perfect."

Aaron immediately jumped in to protest. "Hey, I thought that—"

"You know what I mean. 'Jacob Aaron Anthony' was perfect: the whole thing together. It's—you know—my first kid, and it would have been cool to name him after all of my brothers, that's all." He threw his napkin down and reached for his coffee. "So now I don't know what to do. I'm not about to name her 'Monalisa Claudemonet Rainbowbrite'; that's for damn sure."

Jason took another bite. "Anyone on Makoto's side—"

"Nothing good. Unless you can think of a cute nickname for 'Imaculada'."

"What about making Jacob into a girl name?"

He grunted. "Jacoby?"

Aaron was smiling. "Antonia. We could call her 'Toni'."

"And what? Aarona?"

"Erin," Jason suggested. "'Erin' is nice."

"Aaron?"

The younger man picked at his thumbnail. "Erin Walters had sex with like, half the football team and filmed it. We called her 'Easy-E.'"

Noah let his head fall to the tabletop. "Fuck this. I'm done. You guys pick something and I'll just go along with it. And no—" he said before they could suggest it. "I'm not naming her 'Noah'. That's just stupid."

Aaron shut his mouth, but Jason perked up with renewed energy. "Back up a second, what if we fucked around with their names?"

"Huh?"

"Think about it." Jason stood up and headed towards the cash register, and returned a moment later with a ballpoint pen and a roll of register tape. He ripped off a piece and began writing. "What if we changed the letters around?"

"Change them how?"

He crossed something off the list. "Nah, that doesn't work. Hey, 'Aaron' backwards is 'Nora'. That's not too bad."

Noah tested it out. "Nora. It's not."

"What about the other two?" Aaron interjected. Being the youngest, he was constantly aware of his place in the pecking order.

"Nora Antonia…Jacoby. Crap. Jacob always messes up everything for us."

Jason scribbled again on the scrap of paper. "Bacoj?"

"Fuck it, Jace. The backwards thing isn't working."

"Fine, fine. What if we thought of something to save your mom's monogram?"

Noah groaned. "Was she still going on about that? I told her not to get the stupid things freaking monogrammed. The only people that wear monograms are those yuppie douchebags that have initials and Roman numerals after their name."

Jason ignored him and wrote "A J A" down the side of the receipt paper. "OK, give me an 'A' name."

"Apathy."

He leveled Noah with his piercing blue gaze. "Do you want my help or not?"

"Sorry. Uh, Ann."

Aaron jumped in. "Abigail."

"Oh, no not that one. There were three other 'Abigails' in the nursery last night."

"OK, I didn't know that. How about 'Angela'?"

Jason had frozen and was staring down at the paper. Noah nudged him. "Jace, did you get that? 'Angela'."

Slowly, his friend picked the pen back up and circled the three letters. "I think I got something. You guys almost finished?"

They threw out a few more names while finishing breakfast, and headed back to the car. Jason beat Noah to the shotgun side. "You sit in the back. And give me that Steely Dan CD."

Noah was too tired to protest as he passed the CD to the front seat. Better get used to this.

Jason threw it in the CD player and turned up the volume. "Check this out."

Trippy piano music before the drums kicked in. "This is definitely Dad's CD," Aaron said, pulling out of the parking lot. "He's played this before in the car with me."

Jason held the case up like a trophy. "Aja."

"What?"

"It's the name of the song. And well, the album. It's a classic. It's Steely Dan, bro."

The whitest hip-hop fan in the world was unimpressed. "It sounds like we should be smoking a bowl to fully appreciate it."

"That and probably dropping acid. Listen to the drums though…this shit is tight."

"Does this have a point?"

"Yeah," Jason flung the jewel case at Noah's chest. "Aja. A-J-A. Anthony Jacob Aaron. There's your damned monogram, and it's a girl name that has no slutty connotations that we know of. Aaron?"

Noah's brother shook his head. "I don't know any 'Aja's'".

He tried it out again. "It sounds like 'Asia'. Everyone is going to think she's Asian."

Jason was giving him a look. "Yeah, they're totally going to think that. I know a girl named 'April'. I don't think she's a calendar."

"That makes—"

"I know a Penny; I don't think she's currency."

Aaron got in on the joke. "I know a Mercedes."

Jason cocked his head. "And?"

"Oh, I don't know. She's a slut."

"Aaron, when we get back to the hospital, remind me to get you a shot of penicillin before your dick rots off." He turned back to Noah. "And so what if it sounds Asian? Just in case you forgot, your wife has a Japanese name, despite being a hundred percent smoking hot Brazilian, and she's done OK with it."

He tried it out again. "Aja."

"Aja," Jason echoed.

"Aja," Steely Dan crowed in the background.

Noah was still unsure. "I'm going to need buy-in by the boss."

"Understandable. If not, we've got a whole lot of slut-names to go with."

Jason gave him a last one-armed hug before parting at the hospital entrance. There were Radways still cluttering the corridor, clumped together in twos and threes as they chatted with each other, although the volume had been reduced to a mere fraction of what it was before. A nurse passed by Noah, muttering under her breath, wondering whether any of these people had to be at work on a Tuesday.

He frowned; someone obviously didn't have a close relationship with her family.

His wife's eyes were closed when he came in; the only other person in the room was Noah's father, who was standing and cradling the baby while making soft hushing noises to her. He looked up as Noah entered. "Hi son."

"Hey Dad."

"I guess I should be calling you that now," Dr. Radway said, smiling down at the tiny pink form curled in his arms. She was sporting a soft blue cotton cap over her head, and a few dark wisps were poking out from underneath the rim. Noah noted that it was also monogrammed; his mother was very thorough.

Noah yawned and went over to the bed to check on Makoto; her even breath sighed through her lips as she languished in exhausted slumber.

"Hey." He turned at his father's voice. "How're you doing?"

For a second, just one, Noah wanted to regress and run to his father's side, clinging to it, eyes squeezed shut, until the new, raw confusion bursting in his soul was smoothed back over by parental comfort. In his mind, he still could only reach his father's waist. He remembered the feel of the old brown sweater with the patched elbows, knew its smell of aftershave and fabric softener, and the slightly musty smell of old books and research manuals that cluttered up his office. In those first few months after the divorce, when his father was living in an old house closer to the university, Noah had felt that urge many times. But he had been ten, and too old for that shit already. He would watch with jealousy, as four-year old Aaron would take advantage of that luxury time and time again as he hung back and tried to pretend that he wasn't bothered by the crushing turn of events.

The moment passed as he remembered that he was the one who someone would be running at to make everything all better.

"I'm OK."

Noah's father smiled behind his dark beard and bounced the small body in his arms. "Makoto told me that you were going to pick her name."

"Uh, yeah. I think I have something. Actually," he smirked. "Jason thought of it."

"I'm not surprised," Dr. Radway said. "Jason's very creative."

"He actually cribbed it off of one of your CDs," Noah admitted, settling into a chair.

"Mine?"

He told his father the name, and the older man's eyebrows picked up over the top of his glasses as he nodded. "Ah, Hindu and Yoruba mythology. West African origin," he clarified off of Noah's confused expression. "Can be a patron of the forest, or a 'wild wind' that would transform normal people into magical beings."

Noah cleared his throat, trying to cut his father off at the impasse. If he picked up steam, his daughter would be learning to drive before he stopped talking. "Jason stuck the first letter of my brothers' names together and came up with that."

The baby let out a tiny cry, followed by some hacking gurgles. Dr. Radway crossed the room and held her out to Noah. "Oopsie there, grandbaby. Here, go to Daddy."

Noah pulled the baby close to him and rocked her awkwardly. "Hey, it's OK. Don't cry."

The baby's mouth opened, but not sound emerged. She closed it and opened her eyes and stared up at her father. He noticed that her eyes were dark gray, just like the book had said, and her eyebrows were so light that they were almost invisible. He didn't know why it was so amazing that she had all her body parts in miniature. She was perfect.

His father was smiling down at him and absently scratching his hair. "It doesn't seem that long ago that I was holding you like that."

Noah looked up. It wasn't often that his father mentioned him as a baby. There weren't too many pictures of him at that stage either; the glamour of a new baby had apparently worn off by the time Noah came around. "You pretty much knew what you were doing by then."

"Nope." His father turned and gathered his coat and scarf. "Every child is a new danger and possibility. You'll never get used to the wonder of it, no matter how many kids you have." He shrugged on his coat and patted his pockets. "I'll go get Aaron and take us home. We were all too anxious to sleep, so Paloma made popcorn and we played Monopoly all night. We'll come back tonight to bring you guys some dinner."

"Dad?"

He stopped at the doorway. Noah took a breath and continued. "What do you think of the name?"

Dr. Radway drummed his fingers against the doorframe before answering. "Why don't you ask her?"

"Who, Makoto or Aja?"

His father smiled and disappeared before Noah realized what he had said. He waited until he was alone with his new child and sleeping wife, and looked down at the tiny being in his arms. The pull of love was so strong that it was nearly overwhelming; he felt the tight constriction gathering in his throat as he held her close and whispered:

"My little girl's name is Aja."