Charlie and the...

I only remember sweat drops falling on my feet from the top of my forehead. Every third of them dropped on the wound I had on my big toe like it was some type of lottery. The salt was burning and I felt it so deep inside but I could not scream, they watched, so I screamed inside.

My responsibility was as everyone else's - to harvest cacao and never make them angry.

My father, a wise man, once told me a family legend:

"We used to be free, offering this powerful cacao drink to our Gods to ask for guidance and forgiveness for all of our misleading choices as humankind, the Higher Power comes from the drink and only the ones who stood for humanity could drink it like Gods, after ceremony the bowl was always empty and the Gods have been praised and forgiving".

...But I don't believe in legends.

I simply don't know any different. One thing I usually do is to try to survive until the night comes but every day their demands become greater and the work harder.

In this heat people just fall apart. You know... the other ones, they seem to think we are immortal because we are black. They all wear hats and watch from afar.

Yesterday I collapsed... I couldn't stand the pain, neither the sun, it was one of these days when I simply didn't make it. The white man walked towards me and he whipped me so hard, he cut the skin on my back, my legs and even my toes. Then he laughed to his companion:

"Look, I will never understand why it bleeds red if it is black".

Their voices usually hunt me at night together with the voice of my father who always repeated "they hate us because we are special, they use us because we got what they don't have - the soul and the chocolate".

His voice reminds me that I need to keep going, just in case his words are true. If we are the holders of the Truth, this is time that in pain or tears I must move.

I'm Charles, but everyone here calls me Charlie. On 17th of January 1826 I was sold to Charleston in South Carolina in America. Sir Hyman Cohen bought me and after a long journey on the ship called Edgefield I watched a different world to reveal. I'm 16 and I worked for white people for 5 years. This time is different, although I also work on the field like before...

This time I just decided I don't want to share with others much about myself so I told everyone here that back home I worked in chocolate factory.

It is actually true. Well, part of it...

They laugh at me but I'm happy to make them smile from time to time. Especially her.

"Oh, Charlie and his chocolate factory, he makes chocolate cakes like no other!"

- she laughed and that was the first moment I felt this strange pain in my stomach, fulfilled with joy, yet the rest of my body kept bleeding and hurting. She was the most beautiful of all I've seen. White people around here are obsessed with the chocolate cake. I am obsessed with her. Although, I've never tasted one, she reminds me the chocolate cake everyone is talking about. Her skin so soft and so brown... Her eyes like two of the chocolate buttons that people enjoy at the end. Her eyes make me to forget all the pain. She makes me smile... She makes me the Charlie I always wanted to be... The one who have written a better story for himself... And for her.

One day we will both be free... Because we got something they don't have.

The soul, the chocolate and the dreams.

~ Facts: Charles (Last name unknown), 16-years-old Black boy was a passenger of Edgefield going to Charleston of South Carolina on 17th January 1826. He was enslaved by Hyman Cohen, who 15 years later was an owner of Berlin Plantation in Jamaica. It is unclear if Charles followed him to Jamaica.

~Fiction: This story is a fiction strongly rooted in the reality of Black people enslaved and transported to America. However, I do have hope that like in this story Charlie met love of his life that helped him to survive until the slavery was ended in America in 1865 and that Charlie had a chance to live the rest of his life as a free man.