Page's brother (Page's Pov)

How can I forget the trauma I had to go through as I kid? The marks alone on my body will not give me peace, not to talk of the mark on my lower back. It isn't easy to forget the pains I went through working in the hot summer at the mines. We used to hide and work because the slave trade was illegal. We were smuggled and sometimes our master pay his way for us to work in the open in the mines. Dave had spoken about forgiveness ...but no, I had this heaviness in my heart whenever I remember, not to talk about the racism in the state. It reminds me of once being a slave. It kept on tormenting me in my dreams.

How can I forgive them, I meant the whites, they even slaved some of the Americans. I wondered if they were human beings. I remember the barbaric treatment merited to slaves. Our masters could just shoot some of the children because they couldn't do any work for them or even sell some of them. We fed once a day, oh that horrible meal. Talking about being fed, I ate what My mom got in secret. When she doesn't get the opportunity to carry me along when moving to another working site, I could be left alone hiding in the mines. Thank God they always came back and luckily for me we were about ten kids kept hidden. My mother had to hide me a lot whenever the masters come around for inspection. However, I was found out when one of the slaves whose child had been shot dead reported my mom. The master took a good look at me and turned me around like someone doing 360 turns. Finding out I was old enough perhaps for him or strong.

" Teach her how to work" he ordered and gave my mom a good stare almost like a glare. Our slave master, Mr. Smith was not interested in selling us, that's it my mom and myself. He kept my mom and me at me performing house chores and sometimes we were hired to perform varieties of labor. Our master had this interest in the necklace around my mother's neck. It was an obsession that put us in danger. My mom's necklace looked like gold or it wasn't, it changes color from time to time. I cannot quite remember, I was very young then. I was four at least that was the age my new master David gave me. Mr. Smith's obsession got worse within a short time he threatened to kill me.

"Give me that necklace or your little monkey Is gone," he said to my mom, choking and pointing a gun at me.

"Hurry!" he commanded, still choking and pointing the gun at me. I had my legs above the ground and tears flowed down from my eyes. Shakingly, my mother's hand went to the back of her neck and in tears, she removed the necklace. Not after muttering some words and our master just snatched the necklace from her and pushed her. Leaving me to hit the ground and I screamed in pain as I broke my leg. My mother lifted me and hold me tightly as if I was going to be taken away too. She continued to have her eyes fixed on Mr. Smith who still had the gun pointed at us.

"Go away!" She shouted at him and he zoomed off laughing heartedly. It had been the second time he had taken the necklace from us. That was my mother's only possession apart from me. The first time he took it, it got missing from him. We were working out in the cotton plantation when it fell from the sky onto my mother's feet. Although he had been seeing her wearing it, he had been quiet for months until that very day. There's a secret about this necklace which whenever I remember I go into a trance.

"Take it off! Hurry up!" our slave master commander few minutes after he took her necklace. His face was red and his eyes were falling out of their sockets.

" Please" he pleaded humbly this time around and was still choking or whatsoever was happening to him making me giggle. Hey, don't judge me. I Know as Christians we have to wish good for our enemies but I couldn't control myself. Hahahaha...I still laugh whenever I remember. And this drew the attention of the other slaves and minor masters since Mr. Smith was everybody's boss. Hmm.. unlike before when he was forced to take it from us. what am I saying, they were used to such treatments, or who dared to stand up to him?

"Will you hurry up? before I feed your head with some bullets?" Tom a young white adult who always acted to be his assistant threatened. He continued to move the gun from mother to daughter.

As I was growing up, I got to understand that it wasn't just the necklace our master was interested in but in my mother also. However, my mother liked him also, leaving me alone to do the hating. Although when it comes to beauty and attraction, whites are considered more beautiful. We are still not considered as. My mother was a beautiful woman, she has beautiful bronze skin and deep brown eyes. Her lips were pink like always painted and her hair was shiny and soft. Some of the masters we worked for attempted to rape her but we always escaped with the help of Mr. Smith. One of the minor masters was shot by him when he tried to rape her. Well, we enjoyed some favors but she regretted them soon enough. Sometimes I could catch him staring at my mother through the window of his 'so-called office' staring at her. To admit, he was a handsome man just because he had this burnt mark on the left side of his face, so he used to wear hats a lot. It was only my mother who could describe his facials as aand some since she was the only one to fully see his face before me.

" Did you do anything bad?" she could ask when she also catches him staring. It got time, I had to sleep alone in the cages at the mines whiles my mother spend hours into the night at the master's house. He was a businessman who didn't stay in one place for a long time and so we didn't know about his family. It was the fourth country since we started moving and every summer, our number increased.