Patwá
When I was a young boy, Sundays spoke a strange tongue: Jesus and his gang of bells, the cry of the rag’n bone man clip-clopping down our street, and sometimes I’d hear fascists, communists, feminists and anarchists at Speakers Corner in Hyde Park. But it was the Patwá my father would speak, when we visited relatives, that was the most mysterious of all. On the way he’d usually stop to talk to some man or woman (often a woman), their words washing the grey of Ladbroke Grove with the exotic oranges, reds and greens of St. Lucia, the traffic’s rhythm rocking like fishing boats in a blue bay, and whenever I’d ask him "who was that?" he’d kiss his gold front teeth. "Family," he’d say. "Family." I haven’t heard Patwá in years now. I look up the word for family, for father, for son.