Still Life With Freckles
Celeste Hamilton Dennis


​I’m in Mrs. Landman’s 5th grade class and she asks us to take out Health: Focus on You. I’m covered in spots and dots from the top of my forehead down to my big feet. I can’t bear to hear the word “melanin” or have everyone’s heads turn to look at my fire-red cheeks when we’re talking about how bad it is that I don’t have enough melanin to protect my skin from the sun, or if I’m really unlucky, melanoma.  I excuse myself and pretend I have to go to the bathroom. 

*
 
My aunt Dianne is touching my arm, winking, pretending to pluck the freckles from my skin and put them on hers. Honey, I’m gonna steal some of these cute freckles for myself, she says. Go ahead, I tell her. I pop the collar of my jean jacket. I don’t care.
 
*
 
I’m out fishing with Dad on a jetty in Montauk and he’s wearing shorts so short I think he’s stolen them from my mom. I can’t help but stare. He has freckles all over his body--even on his knees. He gets a kick that he’s passed down his genes to me. It’s like somebody put a screen over your face and shot mud through it, he likes to say. As if he’s telling me, We’re Hamiltons, kid. When I go back to the house and start fighting with my mom about bedtime, I’m proud that I’m more Hamilton than Desposito.

*
 
My younger sister and I are close to borrowing nearly every Pippi Longstocking VHS tape from Levittown Library. Today, while mom’s napping before she heads to the bowling alley for her waitress shift, we’re watching the episode where Pippi sees a sign in a perfume shop window. Next to a jar of freckle salve, it reads:  Do you suffer from freckles? Yes, I want to scream at the screen. But Pippi, she marches into the shop with her raggedy dress and wild pigtails and tells the woman behind the counter, I love them. If you should happen to get in any salve that gives people more freckles, then you can send me seven or eight jars.
 
*

A boy at lunch: Do you have freckles on your butt?
 
*
 
I’m on the swing at Abbey Lane elementary, my two girlfriends on the swings next to me, and we’re moaning like we’re having sex. Like we even know what sex really is at 12 years old. The boys are pretending not to watch us.  John Kelly, who will end up being my first kiss after he catches me staring at the bulge in his speedo at our swim meet, says: I want to lick every freckle off your body.  I pretend not to hear him. 
 
*

It’s one of my middle school friend’s ideas to switch faces for a photo. Meaning, she will cake mine with layers of Mary Kay foundation and I will use an eyeliner pencil to cover hers with spots. It will be funny, she says. In the photo, my bangs are plastered to my forehead and I look like a mannequin whose face has melted. It is at once me and not me, and I want to burn the photo and also stash it under my bed where I keep all my notes from friends in a Keds box.
 
*
 
I’m babysitting my younger sister and by babysitting I mean sitting her down in front of Punky Brewster reruns while I’m on the phone with friends, making plans to drink Zimas in the sump behind the deli. Everyone calls my sister Punky. She is the mini-me with pigtails and buck teeth. Except she’s way cuter than I’ll ever be. She likes to tell me this all of the time. Just look at your baby picture, she says, pointing to the wall. I’m wearing a sailor suit and I already have freckles on my cheeks. She says, You’re a boy.
 
*
 
My friend Sue starts calling me Freckles. In her squeaky voice, it’s sweet. Anyone else dares to call me that in the high school hallways and I will get all dragon on them, I swear. They don’t.  Playing strip poker in a tent in a friend’s backyard one night, my most crushworthy of crushes traces his fingers over a few seemingly lost freckles on my stomach, making the shape of a cross. Maybe I am blessed.
​
*
 
Dad gives me a black eye my senior year for butting into one of the many fights he’s had with my sister about her smoking, her tongue ring, her boyfriend who likes to race cars. My mom wants me to press charges. I don’t. But my skin is no longer the mark of a secret alliance with Dad, the thing I have claimed from him as my own. I find refuge at my grandparents house, the Despositos, and begin to revere their long noses and sharp tongues.
 
*
 
A lover my first year of college traces his hands up and down the freckles along my back, my breasts, my thighs while we’re naked in a gazebo on campus. It’s like you’re exotic, he says. I think that’s a good thing. But I’m not so sure a few months later when he’s not returning my phone calls.
 
*
 
I’m in Guyana with the Peace Corps teaching at a local school. Everyday my students run their hands up and down my arms.  Miss, my auntie can you get you some cream for the rust on your skin, one says. Miss, how you get chocolate on dem skin? says another. One student is my neighbor, a girl with pigtail braids who likes to startle me with squirt guns, and it is she who gives me the nickname, Auntie Punky. I don’t think she’s ever seen the show.  I don’t even think she has a T.V. My sister laughs when I tell her this. The Punky torch is now passed.
 
*
 
A homeless guy holding a sign that says “Need money for penis enlargement” harasses me for change in one breath, tells me my freckles are a gift from God in the next. I don’t believe in God. I don’t know if he’s sincere. But it works. I hand him a five.
 
*
 
We’re binge watching Arrested Development and more than the jokes involving bananas and segways I’m fixated on the character of Maeby. She’s got curly hair like mine and freckles, tons of them, like someone took a Sharpie and polka dotted her face. That’s what I look like? Really?
 
*
 
A random woman at the grocery store holding hot sauce in one hand and maxi pads in another stops me by the kiwis.  She says, I just love your freckles! I say, Thank you?
 
*
 
Dad dies of a stroke. In the casket in the funeral home he’s wearing his Yankees hat. His freckles are completely hidden under a layer of chalky foundation. It’s too light. Undertone is key. We’re warm. Never neutral. He would do best with a chestnut or caramel, like me.  I touch his cold cheek. He feels like a rubber chicken. Asshole, I want to say. You died before I could apologize. I didn’t really mean it when I said I didn’t ever want to talk to you again.  
 
*
 
I marry a man who says my freckles remind him of Danielle Miller, his second grade crush who used to make thumbholes in her sweaters because the teacher made her nervous.
 
*
 
A little girl at the park is standing nearby as I’m pushing my two young daughters in swings. What’s wrong with her skin? she asks her mom who is wearing a hijab. Her mom smiles at me and tugs on the black fabric. The girl drops her lollipop on the fake grass. As I give it back to her, my hand brushes hers. There’s a static shock. Ouch! she screams. Great. I just ruined it for every freckled person she meets from here on out.
 
*
 
Someday my freckles will morph into liver spots.
 
*
 
My daughter Hattie, who is blonde and has skin the color of whole milk, comes running over to me one day. Mom, she says. Look what I found! I think she’s discovered leftover Halloween candy under her bed.  She rolls up the sleeve of her Hello Kitty t-shirt. A freckle! she says. Just like you.

 
 
 

About the Author:  Celeste Hamilton Dennis is a freelance writer and editor in Portland, Oregon. Her work has appeared in various literary journals including Drunken Boat, Boston Accent Lit, Barely South Review, Praxis, and more. When she’s not engaged in the arts activism space or being a mom to two little girls, she’s working on a book of short stories connected by her hometown of Levittown, NY. She's got a fixation on chain restaurants and mouthy women.

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