Queenie

I learned about gambling from buttons.

They were our chips, in place of and yet more precious than coins.

Although each button counted for the same, the bigger, shinier ones were more prized by my brother and me. Who could care, after all, about a tiny shirt button, ten a penny? The real treasures were the coat buttons, silvery and solid, heavy in your palm.

We played Queenie, the hands dealt in silence, including a ‘dummy’ hand next to the dealer. One card was placed face down in the middle of the table, and we piled our buttons into three pots: you could win for playing a three-card run, for playing the Queen of the same suit as the face-down card, and of course for ‘chip’ – being the first to play all your cards. If a pot wasn’t claimed, it would carry over to the next game. 

There being only three of us, the hand was large, almost too many cards for my own small hand to hold. Carefully I fanned them out, excitement fluttering in my chest, looking and longing for the faces of those elusive red and black queens, their sidelong glances conspiring with me, seeming to whisper, win.

The number cards were bland, the sevens and twos were the shirt buttons of the deck, the everyday, only a means in this game to reach the Queen.

The Queen of Hearts was my favourite; she looked kind. To me the Queen of Spades seemed stern, the Queen of Diamonds aloof. The Queen of Clubs had mischief in her half-smile.

Sometimes there would be the drop in the stomach, the disappointment of fanning out thirteen cards to find no Queen at all – what was the point in even playing? Okay, you could play to chip, but that was rarely where the big money was, and didn’t hold the same allure. I learned, though, to present a poker face. I wouldn’t let my opponents know what I was missing.

The big black button was the one I always sought out, my fingers scrabbling in the bottom of the tin, and the one I never gambled. I guarded it jealously, held it like a talisman in my palm, worrying at its underside with my thumb, rubbing the ebony topside still smoother, wishing on it. 

It had belonged on our mother’s best coat, the one she wore to church. 

Now, she was gone. Her button was in this tin along with so many others, and we were taught card games late at night, by a man who never cried. 

Photo by Laine Cooper on Unsplash