Back To The Beach

2024-07-14 “Back To The Beach” by Emma

Well, Jenn, an’ Merritt and me… We been at the beach since sunrise. There was this band playing something called delta blues music, and I kinda heard stuff that was familiar. Seems this kinda music was growed out of the old field hollers the slaves would pass the day with.

But that ain’t what I wanted to tell about.

I tol’ y’all last night I got embarrassed in my nightgown, but look at me in my bikini? Now, I wanna know why my thinking gets it all mixed up? How come I was embarrassed?

I don’t have nothing else… I mean, I don’t have anything else to add about that, but I’m thinking on it.

One of the folk reading my stories messaged me direct and she was just catching on to my history, so I thought I’d give a little review.

I was born in 1861 to a sharecropping family just outside Vicksburg Mississippi. By my way of looking, that was 19 years ago. Back when I started this Instagram, I found out my daddy had dowried me to a man with a store in Vicksburg, but I didn’t want to marry him, so I hopped a train going to Memphis. I fell asleep that night in 1880 in a boxcar, and woke up 144 years later in the cab of a semi truck heading for Omaha, Nebraska. Everything time-shifted with me!

My satchel was a backpack. My change purse and pocketbook was a wallet. My camisoles come to be tank tops. No bloomers, no skirts. Jenn said my poor 1880 clothes musta got made into what poor girls in 2024 would have. They’d come from 2 stores she said were discount department stores—Halmart and Bullseye.

Jenn and Merritt… they got time-shifted. Merritt skipped 40 years ahead and Jenn skipped 27 years. We got hooked up somehow, like whatever made us into time travelers meant for us to be together.

Now, we’re just trying to stick together and figure everything out. After this music festival, we’re going to New York where Merritt has a job.

I don’t know what’s going to happen, but I know I have a lot to… I keep saying I just have to play along and adjust, so that’s what I’m doing.