Free Byrd by Kim Church Page B

money from him, even after he talked it out of Golita. Golita insisted on writing the check herself. “I give you cash, you’ll just put it up your nose,” she said.
    Today is the day. It’s happening now, while he shaves. No, fuck, it happened hours ago—he keeps forgetting the time difference. By now it’s done.
    Kerouac’s girlfriend had an abortion. Kerouac wrote about her in Desolation Angels . Kerouac’s girlfriend’s name was Joyce, but Kerouac changed it to Alyce in the book. Back then, abortions were illegal. Nineteen fifty-six—the year Roland was born, and Addie.
    He splashes water on his face and checks his reflection. Clean face, clean start. Like nothing’s happened yet.
    He pictures Addie in a hospital gown, lying on a table, her thin white arms and legs. Is she scared?
    Maybe he’ll write her a song. Call it “Desolation Angel.”

Love, Stay, Keep
    The clinic has certain people for certain things. One hands you pills in a paper cup. Another escorts you from room to room: the paperwork room, the changing room, the ultrasound room, small and dark. The lab, all bright lights and needles. The counseling room with windows and potted plants. The procedure room. Finally, the recovery room like a big beauty salon, with magazines and soothing music and reclining chairs lined up in two long rows and a smiling, pink-cheeked woman who walks around serving graham crackers and ginger ale. “More?” she asks. “More?” If kindness could be eaten and drunk, it would taste like graham crackers and ginger ale.
    The first couple of rooms—paperwork, changing—are nothing, except the blue gown Addie has to put on is an insult, a thin blue plastic thing that clings to her skin and crackles when she moves and makes her hair electric.
    The ultrasound room is where she comes face to face with what she’s doing. She’s on a table and a nurse comes in and rubs warm Vaseline on her belly and glides a camera over her. “Show me,” she says, and the nurse points to a spot on a black-and-white TV screen. The spot is gray and smaller than a baby bird. Which is how Addie tries to think of him in the beginning: as a bird, something that doesn’t belong in her, a mistake, all blind and gray and no feathers. She wonders what others see when they look at the screen, what images they conjure up to fool themselves. She wonders why the clinic, which has people for everything else, doesn’t have a person to help with this. A useful-metaphor woman in a nice blue smock and crepe-soled shoes.
    Or maybe that’s the job of the clinic counselor, the one with potted plants. She sits them down, Addie and two others, a nervous high school girl and a bored twenty-year-old, and asks a few questions to make sure they’ve come here of their own free will. Then she gives a speech that’s supposed to make them feel brave and wise and strong.
    â€œIs there anything else you need to talk about?” she asks them.
    The high school girl wants to know if she’ll be able to go to the basketball game Friday night. The twenty-year-old says she’s been through this before and knows the drill. Addie says nothing. What can she say? Thirty-two and still no readier to be a mother than they are.
    â€œWill it hurt?” the high school girl asks.
    â€œNo,” the twenty-year-old says.
    Why not , Addie thinks. Don’t we deserve at least a little pain?
    In the procedure room, she lies on a table with her feet in stirrups and stares at the chipped polish on her toenails. Mystic Mauve, the color she wore to California to tell Roland.
    â€œDon’t move,” the doctor says. “I can’t do this if you move.”
    She’s shivering; she can’t help it. She’s cold. Her gown is so thin. She twists her head to find the nurse. “Can I please have a blanket?” she asks. “A sheet, anything?”
    â€œRight