Angela Joynes

Listen to Angela read her story:

Establishment newspapers called the police officer’s death in the riot “heinous.” As if licking their lips, they opined that Miss Astoria Lynd’s murder trial would be “swift and decisive.” 

On corners in Soho, hippie pamphlets huffed disagreement. Unfortunate yes, but obviously accidental death during the protest. Yet given widespread misogyny and the general corruption of institutions, the pamphlet’s editor glumly foresaw the unscrupulous murder conviction of her hero and friend.

The placid anti-war protest led by Astoria Lynd on the NYU campus had escalated in numbers and decibels that steamy June evening. Protesters claimed that the pigs overreacted, forming an unnecessary shield wall against the unarmed. Then, neither side seemed to know why, the police began lobbing tear gas at the cross-legged, chanting women. The chemicals had inflamed Astoria’s nostrils and eyes, and something much deeper.

The bailiff called order. Even in the imposing courtroom before the most severe judge, Astoria stood straight backed and fearless. Surely they’d see the officer had started it. He’d raised his baton to bludgeon her neck. For no earthly reason. In response, she’d only done what came naturally, what she’d been doing since the day of her birth. Stubborn. Irascible. A mite of a rebel since delivery, Astoria had been a colicky baby bound to become feral. Neighbors, aunts, and teachers predicted heartbreak at best, apocalypse at the worst. Her poor parents threw up their paws. But Astoria made no apologies for anything. Ever. She’d twisted away from the officer, howling a warning, then soundly kicked both his balls. As the buggy-eyed fella drooped to the ground, her Birkenstocked foot happened to twitch, striking his Circle of Willis. After that, the matter was out of her hands.

Lacking a single one of her true peers, the gray-haired jury filed in, suited in tweed with ties, baggy trousers, wire-rimmed specs, and condemning expressions. The only two female jurors were skirted but otherwise consistent. En groupe they could have advertised for the Republican Party or the NRA. Maybe they did. As soon as Astoria eyed the twelve who wielded the metaphorical blade, she steeled herself for the verdict. It would be guilty. A quick guilty at that. A call for the electric chair wouldn’t surprise her.

Astoria and her attorney, who’d never mounted such a peculiar defense, attempted to explain to the jury and judge why Astoria wasn’t responsible. After all, she’d been born feet first, a footling breech. There’d been no mundane cephalic presentation for the likes of this one. No. During labor her tiny legs had dangled and flailed in the pitch-black vagina through every protracted contraction as her mother’s shrieks shredded ears as far as the cafeteria. When no one, not least the parturient mother, could stand it one moment longer, the balding, stuttering doctor finally jerked forth the wriggling creature of slime using massive steel forceps. Thus, baby Astoria squirted into a blinding, bright delivery room on a snow-sparkled day not far from Woodstock, NY.

From then on, Astoria Lynd claimed the right of every footling breech girl to rebel. She flouted crinolined dresses, bobby socks, lipstick, and saddle shoes. While her moods jived with scanty miniskirts, ‘60s notions, inventive sex, and illegal substances, she stoutly grappled political wars and injustices. If she were condemned to live a very short life, and it certainly looked that way, Astoria was particularly grateful she hadn’t been allotted the banal life of all those girl babies born skull first. At least she’d jigged it up.

Finally deliberations concluded. The jury appeared grim, the judge even grimmer. Astoria took a breath of stale air, annoyed to smell her own sweat, taking that as a sign of unwelcome weakness, because even on trial she’d refused to capitulate to mass expectations, to wear deodorant, to wash, or to dress conventionally. No, the freckled breech-born rebel stood short-skirted and suede-vested with stringy blond hair, the only evidence of inner disquiet the clench of her jaw. The judge thwacked his gavel. His mustache did the muttering for him. 

“Miss Lynd, please rise.”

“Ms.” She interjected.

Astoria awaited the heft of the word starting with G. The foreman rose. His red, bristled chin quivered. Although held in both hands, his notepaper trembled. Then he frowned, indeed scowled. 

“We the jury find the defendant, Astoria Lynd…not guilty.” 

Collective gasps hoovered all air from the chamber.

A diminutive, gray-haired woman sitting to the foreman’s left briefly lifted her head only once and looked straight into Astoria’s eyes with a flash of conspiratorial triumph. Astoria understood then that she’d been granted a narrow reprieve, a pardon by one, a pardon by a particularly implacable one. At the verdict, Astoria was more astounded than relieved. She’d been prepared to accept her punishment with equanimity, because what other outcome could she have expected after that foot-first, forcep-forced birth? 

Astoria Lynd was forever a footling breech girl. And maybe, just maybe, that juror was too.

Angela Joynes is a disabled Canadian writer who hold a BA, MD, and Certificate in Creative Writing. Words in The Ilanot Review, The West Trestle Review, National Flash Fiction Day Anthologies ’23, ’24, Fictive Dream, and Susurrus Literary Journal among others. Angela was indeed a footling breech girl delivered by forceps, which explains much of her subsequent life, although no murder trials (yet.)