Kelly’s Nicknames

The housie game was on the top deck of a ferry, crossing the sea in the evening. Passengers sat on benches with cards on their knees and the wind tugging at the corners. The caller was a girl of fifteen called Kelly, with a ponytail, a waistcoat, and a big brass key on a cord round her neck.

She drew the first ball. “Kelly’s eye — number one!”

The second. “Two little ducks — twenty-two!”

And the whole deck, all at once, went “Quack, quack!”

Ama burst out laughing. Tam looked around, startled. Grandmothers were quacking. A sailor was quacking. A little boy on his dad’s shoulders was quacking loudest of all.

“Every number has a nickname,” Rima explained. “Housie callers have used them for a long time. Watch how they work.”

“Legs eleven!” called Kelly, and a few people whistled.

“Key of the door — twenty-one!” She held up the brass key on its cord.

“Top of the shop — ninety!”

Tam felt a little left out. Everyone else seemed to know what was coming, and she didn’t know any of them yet.

At the break, Kelly came and leaned on the rail beside them. “First time?” she asked Tam. “Don’t worry. Nobody’s born knowing them. You’ll have half of them by the time we dock.”

“Why do they work?” Ama asked. “Why ducks?”

Kelly grinned and drew a two in the air with her finger. “What does a two look like?”

Ama looked. The curve on top, the flat bottom. “A duck sitting on water!”

“So two twos are two little ducks. Legs eleven: one, one, two thin legs standing side by side. Those are shape nicknames.”

“And the key?” said Tam.

“That’s a story one.” Kelly turned the brass key in her fingers. “My great-grandad got the key to his own front door on his twenty-first birthday. He gave it to me when I started calling. Some nicknames come from stories like that, and some just rhyme with the number.”

“So a nickname has to be stuck to the number somehow,” said Ama. “By the shape, or the sound, or a story.”

“That’s it,” said Kelly. “A random nickname is useless. Call twenty-two ‘the big banana’ and nobody remembers. Tie it to the number and the whole deck knows it before you’ve finished the word.”

She let them invent one. Tam looked at the number eight for a long time: two circles, one on top of the other.

“A snowman,” she said. “Eight is a snowman.”

Kelly tried it in the next game. “Snowman — number eight!” A few people laughed. By the third time, someone at the back shouted “Brrr!”, and Tam felt suddenly like she was part of the crowd.

In the call book, Ama wrote: Housie. Tie the nickname to the number — by shape, by sound, or by a story. Two little ducks. Snowman eight (Tam’s).