Byrd by Kim Church

can hear him down the hall, his hungry, hopeless squawking.
    She names him Byrd. With a Y, like an open beak.
    â€œThis probably isn’t the best time to mention it,” Sam says to Claree, “but Margaret and I are thinking of moving.”
    â€œWhere?”
    â€œOut here. Where it’s dry. Where I can breathe.”
    â€œI don’t understand, honey. Plenty of people with asthma live in North Carolina. Isn’t your medicine working?”
    â€œSure, it’s all working just fine, all the steroids and inhalers. Also ruining my liver. Didn’t you read the book I sent?”
    â€œI was going to,” Claree says. It isn’t that she doesn’t take Sam’s asthma seriously; she just doesn’t like to think about it all the time. “What about an air purifier? I’ve heard there’s a new one on the market like they use in hospitals. I’ve heard it removes dust and moisture and everything.”
    Sam doesn’t answer. Claree knows this silence by heart.
    â€œI just worry you won’t be happy in the desert,” she says, “with no trees. You love trees. When you were small your favorite place was the woods. We bought that yellow teepee and set it up in the woods, and you and Addie practically moved in. That was before the Davenports bought the lot next door, remember? Remember the summer you found the bird? A robin with a broken wing, and we built a cage for it next to the teepee, and you and Addie spent all summer nursing it, digging up worms and feeding it until it could fly.”
    â€œIt was a blue jay.”
    She lights another cigarette, sighs into the receiver. “I still think about that lot next door. We should have bought it when we had the chance, before the Davenports cut down your woods.”
    â€œDid you know,” Sam says, “that most kids whose parents smoke get asthma sooner or later?”
    â€œThat can’t be true. Where did you hear that?”
    â€œSomething like sixty-five percent. It was in the book I sent you.”
    â€œDoes this book say anything about air purifiers? Because I’ve heard the new one is supposed to take everything out of the air.”

Non–Identifying Information
    Dear Byrd ,
    My social worker, Janet Worry (not her real name), says I should write you letters. She doesn’t know I’ve been writing you all along .
    She says a lot of her mothers (that’s how she talks, “my mothers”) have trouble getting started. Some copy out favorite poems or song lyrics. Some send greeting cards .
    â€œGreeting cards?” I said .
    â€œIt’s a start,” she said .
    â€œWhat do your mothers write about?” I said .
    â€œEverything,” she said, “anything. Sometimes it’s easiest to start with the facts, details of the child’s birth. Whatever you think your child might like to know. Just be careful to leave out any identifying information.”
    On the day you were born, J.D. took me to the hospital and went with me to the maternity floor. The carpet in the elevator smelled like iodine. One stop before ours, an orderly got on pushing a woman on a gurney. The woman’s arms were covered with needle bruises. She had a high, weak voice, and she kept asking the orderly, “Why are you doing this, why are you doing this?”
    They took me to a room and put me in a bed and J.D. came in and planted himself in the recliner and turned on the TV, some show about dolphins. I watched him watching. I watched the dolphins in his glasses. The room smelled like him. I felt safe. Then a nurse came in all crisp and efficient and said to him, “Are you the father?”
    â€œThe driver,” he said .
    â€œMaybe you’d like to wait in the waiting room .”
    J.D. stood up. He looked like Paul Bunyan. He came and stood over my bed and laid his hand on the top of my head like he had something to tell me. “Let me know how the show comes