Margie Kelly Breaks the Dress Code

by Bridget Farr

  She smiles. “¿Hablas español?”

  I tilt my hand back and forth. “Más o menos.”

  “¿Cómo te llamas?”

  “Margie.”

  “Yo me llamo Alejandra,” she says, handing me a piece of gum wrapped in black foil. “But you can call me Ale.”

  “OK, gracias.” Might as well break another rule while I’m in here. Two, actually. Talking and chewing gum.

  “It’s not so bad,” she says. “Did you bring a book?”

  “I brought my backpack, but I don’t have any library books yet. Or assignments I can work on, except for a math worksheet.”

  The girl leans over to Gloria, who is sketching on thick creamy paper. “Gloria, dale papel a Margie.”

  Gloria looks up from her drawing, pushing long strands of hair aside like curtains. As she flips through the sketchbook for an empty page, I see a dozen portraits of celebrities. Some I don’t know, but others I can name instantly. She drew some in pen, but most are in pencil.

  “Those are really good,” I say, speaking a little louder so she can hear me, but hopefully not loud enough to get caught.

  Gloria nods. “I practice.” She rips out a blank page, then removes all the dangling paper bits from the edge.

  “Do you guys get dress coded a lot?” I ask.

  Gloria shrugs as she adds curls to some woman’s hair. “It’s my first time this year, but in seventh grade it was at least once a week.”

  “Seriously?”

  She shrugs. “No pues, but I’m used to it.”

  “I’ve only been dress coded a few times total,” Ale says. “I hate being here; me canso de hacer nada.”

  “What time is it? Do you think it’s third period already?” the girl reading the book asks. I didn’t realize there wasn’t a clock in here, and we’re not allowed to check our phones.

  “Wasn’t that the tardy bell?” Gloria asks, adding a smudge to the woman’s cheek.

  “Ugh, that means I’m missing Forensics. I love that class.”

  “Quiet, girls!” Ms. Padilla calls from her desk. “Or I’ll move you apart.”

  I stare at my blank sheet of paper, suddenly even more angry than I was in Ms. Scott’s room. All I have for the next few hours is a blank sheet of paper and a worksheet on one-step equations. I missed the peer review of my short story and will have to make up my math quiz tomorrow. If I stay here all day, I’ll miss the new song we’re learning in choir and the start of my animation project in visual media. Because I got suspended, I won’t even get to use my brain at Quiz Bowl. The other girls are missing their own classes, too, frog dissections and historical debates. Gloria can draw, but otherwise we have nothing. We’re banned from learning because our legs and our shoulders—our whole bodies—are a distraction. But to who?

  I unwrap my piece of gum and pop it in my mouth. Something has got to change.

  Chapter 11

  After school I stand outside our black front door, even though it’s like a sauna out here from this afternoon’s sprinkle. I’m not ready to go in. I reach down and pull a leaf off the potted geranium we got Grandma for Mother’s Day. I don’t know how it’s stayed alive this long, though the end seems near. Maybe it is for me, too.

  When I finally open the door, I’m surprised to find Dad sitting at the table typing on his computer, his UT Austin coffee mug on a coaster by his side. He’s never home this early, especially with traffic. Then he looks up, and that is not the face I was hoping for: he got the voice mail.

  “Nice skirt,” he says, typing a few more things before turning in his chair to face me.

  I slide my hand down the gold sequins and head straight to give him a hello hug, the thing he’s always begging for, but his arms feel strange around me. He lets go, but still holds my hands and looks me in the eye.

  “You got dress coded again.”

  I nod. Dad rubs his temples. “Let me get this clear. You knowingly wore a skirt we had already determined was too short for school and then had to spend the day at in-school suspension?”

  “You could have brought me a change of clothes,” I say, angry that he’s blaming me when he was too busy yet again to answer his phone. Yes, I was happy at first when he didn’t answer, but that was before I had to spend seven hours in ISS, my brain shriveling like a California raisin.

  Dad’s mouth drops open. That was the wrong thing to say. “Do not blame this on me, Margaret Kelly. I was in meetings this morning when Ms. Scott called—”

  “Ms. Scott called you, too?”

  “Yes, and Ms. Padilla, but you are responsible for your choices. I couldn’t leave my meeting even if I wanted to, but you knew you would get in-school suspension if you wore that skirt. You have to live with the consequences.”

  “But it’s not fair that I can’t wear the clothes I want,” I say, running my fingers along the bottom of the skirt. “The dress code is stupid. The teachers only care about what girls are wearing. A boy could probably wear a swimsuit, and no one would say anything. And haven’t you always said that I shouldn’t be treated any differently ’cause I’m a girl? Didn’t Mom want me to be a feminist like her?”

  Dad sighs, rubbing the back of his hand over his eyebrows. “You’re probably right. A lot of rules aren’t fair, and your mom would know how to coach you through this. You and I can work on how to fix these big societal problems, but you didn’t change anything today. You just got in trouble.”

  He sounds just like Daniela. You didn’t change anything. You’re not doing anything.

  Dad squeezes my shoulder. “Seems like you already received consequences at school, so there’s nothing else we need to do at home, unless you have another miniskirt you plan on wearing.”

  I shake my head no, relieved that nothing worse is going to happen. I still have my phone. Dad turns back to his computer, father-daughter discussion apparently over.

  My bedroom looks like a hotel again. The bed is made with the top of my pink polka-dot sheets folded over the comforter to make a cuff, the rest tucked so tight around the edges my feet will suffocate. On my pillow is a note in Grandma Colleen’s loopy cursive: “Hospital corners, turned down, pillows fluffed.” The pile of books and notebooks next to my bed is now a neat stack, the edges lined up perfectly. That note just says “Even.” My pajamas aren’t lying behind the door anymore, and above the laundry basket is a little sticky note pressed to the wall: “Dirty clothes here.” Even the picture frames on my dresser have been lined up in a row. She must have cleaned before she left for five o’clock mass.

  I walk over to the dresser, pulling out the top drawer to find what I expected: all my underwear folded into tiny squares, my socks rolled into little balls and sorted by color.

  “Dad!” I call to the dining room. “Grandma’s been in my room again!”

  I pause. “Dad!”

  “What?” he says, peeking around the door, his eyes scanning a piece of paper in his hand.

  “She keeps going through my stuff.”

  Dad looks around my room. “She’s just trying to help.”

  I can do it myself. Dad made me start doing my own chores at four, partially so I would become an independent woman, but also because Mom was gone and he couldn’t do it all himself. I wouldn’t mind Grandma helping me clean if she just stopped there. But she goes through everything! My carefully sorted bottles of nail polish. Every note from Daniela stashed in my nightstand drawer. Thankfully, I don’t have a diary anymore. I have no privacy. At least she doesn’t have my phone passcode.

  “Maybe if you cleaned your room more often, she wouldn’t feel compelled to do it for you,” Dad says as he picks up a sticky note by the light switch that says “Leave room. Lights off.” He presses it against the wall before heading back to his work. I sigh, pushing the drawer closed, not bothering to look in the others, where all my shirts will be folded into tight squares and organized by color instead of how I want them: in order of what I actually like to wear.

  Then I see it:
crammed behind my dresser is a white piece of poster board with crinkled corners. I pull it out, brushing off the dust bunnies before laying it across my bed. “I am woman. Hear me roar,” it says in block Sharpie letters, a red-and-orange lion drawn so that the words are coming out of its jaws. I found it on the sidewalk as Dad and I made our way home from the Women’s March in Austin last year.

  Marching was scary and exciting at the same time. At first, I was just cranky: it was unusually hot, and we stood around for hours before the march even started. I couldn’t imagine why Mom would willingly do this on her precious days off. Dad had packed snacks, but I ate those in about an hour. Once we started moving with the whole crowd of people holding signs and flags, kids riding in wagons, it felt real. It was more people than I’ve ever seen in one place. People were all over the sidewalks and the streets. Some people were even waving from the windows of the skyscrapers. I felt part of something, and suddenly I understood why Mom did it. My heart beat fast as the people around us started chanting. I didn’t sing along. Neither did Dad. But we were doing it! We were part of it. I was officially a feminist. But as we walked down the street, I got nervous because even though all the marching and chanting was really cool, I could tell the adults were really upset. They weren’t having fun marching, like in a parade. They were angry.

  Angry like I am now. About the dress code. About how unfair it all is. I can’t imagine two more years at Live Oak arguing about my skirts or fighting for a spot on the Quiz Bowl team. I want to stand in the hallway and scream like the girl at the march who stood with her arms behind her and yelled into the crowd.

  That’s what we could do! We could do our own protest at school. A march or something. I run to the dining room.

  “Dad, can I borrow your iPad?”

  He’s squinting at his computer, his shoulders hunched in the way that will make him complain about his old age aches and pains tonight at dinner.

  “What do you need it for?”

  “Research.”

  “What class?”

  I lean against the doorjamb. “Not for class, just a project.”

  He holds it out, not looking up. “I changed the passcode. It’s your birthday.”

  I take the iPad to my room and close the door, plopping onto my bed. I type in my birthday and pull up Safari. In Google, I search “dress code protest.” At the top are thumbnails of girls in T-shirts and shorts. No one really looks out of dress code except for a few girls in spaghetti-strap tank tops. I open one of the photos to see the girl’s homemade shirt: “I am not a distraction.” That’s almost exactly what Ms. Scott said to me!

  The first article: “Teens protesting high school dress code fight for right to go braless…” Wow. I didn’t think bras had anything to do with the dress code. I just started wearing one last year, and it took forever to convince Dad to buy it. Everyone in fifth grade except for me and the new girl, Isabella, was already wearing a bra. Dad finally took me to the mall, and I picked out this perfect light-pink silk bra. I wasn’t planning to protest wearing a bra, but maybe I should? Maybe true feminists don’t wear bras. Or makeup. Or shave their legs. Dad wouldn’t let me shave my legs yet, anyway. Not until eighth grade. Daniela only wears a sports bra, and she doesn’t wear makeup or shave her legs. Is she more of a feminist than I am? I make a note to do more research.

  I scroll down the rest of the articles to find kids all over the place—Canada, Montana, Chicago—all protesting their school’s dress code. Most of them are in high school, though some are eighth graders, but I’m sure we could do it, too. One high school girl even got arrested for wearing her protest shirt.

  I’m not ready to get arrested. But I am ready for this.

  I grab a notebook out of my neat stack, sending the rest askew. On a new page, I write “Live Oak Middle School Dress Code Protest To-Do List” and draw a line under it. I scroll back through the pictures, getting ideas for my plan.

  1. Get a slogan

  2. Tell girls about it (and boys if they want to join)

  3. Pick a date

  4. Make signs and shirts

  5. Protest!!!

  I can’t wait to tell Daniela tomorrow at school. You’re just complaining, she said. You’re not actually doing anything. It’s not a perfect plan yet, but it’s a start. I might not be able to change everything sexist in the world, but wait until she sees this!

  Chapter 12

  The wooden door to Mr. Shao’s room slams behind me as I race into Quiz Bowl practice the next day. I trip over the backpacks strewn among the desks as I make my way over to the windows where Daniela and Jamiya are working. Daniela and I haven’t had a chance to talk all day with pretests and lunch groups, and I’m desperate to show her my plans.

  “You’re late, Dress Code,” Marcus calls over the top of Elman’s question. His hand slams the buzzer. “Lord of the Flies.”

  “Correct,” Elman says, and starts another question. I drop my backpack beside Daniela and pull out my brand-new folder stuffed with the research I just acquired at the library.

  “I didn’t think you were coming,” Daniela says, setting down her pile of practice cards. “I almost told them you were sick, but then if you showed up, they would know I lied.”

  “You better take practice seriously if you’re hoping to make the team next year,” Jamiya says as she shuffles through her own set of cards. “You already missed last practice because you were in ISS.”

  “You told her!” I whisper to Daniela.

  “Jamiya doesn’t care.”

  “You think I haven’t been dress coded before?” Jamiya says, her eyebrows raised. “I’m Black. All the girls of color at this school get dress coded at some point, no matter what they’re wearing.” Her current outfit looks like it’s in dress code: a black-and-white NASA T-shirt and a pair of galaxy-printed shorts. It’s hard to tell because she’s sitting down, but they don’t look too short. But who knows what length actually makes Ms. Scott get out her ruler. Apparently it wouldn’t matter how long they were anyway.

  “Have you ever been sent to ISS?” I ask.

  Jamiya shakes her head. “No, but that’s just because my parents made a fuss the first time I got in-school suspension for dress code, and it hasn’t happened since.”

  Dad would never make a fuss at school. He doesn’t even make a fuss when they get his order wrong at a restaurant. Besides, he couldn’t bother to answer the phone when I got dress coded, let alone come get me out of in-school suspension.

  “Can we get back to the practice set?” Daniela asks. “We only have thirty minutes left.”

  “Let me show you something first,” I say, glancing at Mr. Shao, grateful to see he’s staring at his computer, headphones on. I quickly lay out the series of articles about dress code protests like they’re contraband. “I’ve been doing research. Look!”

  I hand Daniela the first article, the one with the girls and the homemade “I am not a distraction” T-shirts. “See? Girls all over the place are protesting. And boys, too.”

  Daniela’s silent as she takes the article from me. She twists the end of her braid as she reads. Jamiya grabs another article.

  “At this march they got, like, four hundred kids to dress up,” I say, pointing to one article, then another. “This one is just a girl by herself, but she made the news because her mom posted about it on Facebook.”

  “Quiet backstage,” Elman yells.

  “Look,” I whisper, pointing to the major one. “This girl even got arrested for her protest.”

  “That’s a little extreme,” Daniela says, pushing the papers back at me and returning to her flash cards.

  “It’s brave! She’s out there doing something and not just complaining. Right? Isn’t that what you said I should do?” I slump back in the desk, my feet sliding across the stained floor.

  “Did that girl getting arrested even change anything?” Daniela asks.

  “I don’t know. But I am going to do something about the dress code. A pro
test or something. You know it’s unfair.”

  Jamiya lays her article down on the desk. “You know the dress code isn’t the only unfair thing at this school, right? I can name a million: Marcus and Mikey are the only other Black kids in any of the advanced classes. Student Council has been fighting for three years to get more diverse books in the library. There’s no gender-neutral bathrooms. Not to mention the millions of microaggressions: pronouncing kids’ names wrong, telling us ‘You don’t sound Black.’”

  “Ms. Johnson called me Danielle all last week,” Daniela says with a roll of her eyes.

  “And this is the first year I’m not the only girl on Quiz Bowl,” Jamiya adds. “And now there’s two.”

  Well, three, if you include me.

  “This school does mistreat girls. I should show you my audit,” I say.

  Daniela puts her hands on mine to stop me from digging in my backpack. “Honestly, Margie, I don’t get why the dress code is such a big deal to you. You were only dress coded twice, and one time it was on purpose.”

  “Yes, but you have no idea how embarrassing it was, standing in front of the class getting my skirt measured. And having to wear those stupid shorts. And ISS! Everyone knows me as Dress Code now. I’m not Margie. I’m Dress Code, all because of a stupid skirt.”

  Tears catch in my eyes, and Daniela squeezes my hand.

  “I didn’t realize you were so upset about it.”

  “I’ve been talking about it since the first day of school!” I shout.

  “Quiet,” both Mr. Shao and Elman warn, their heads snapping toward us.

  I lean in closer. “But it’s not just about me getting dress coded. When I was in ISS, I realized all these girls were missing school because of their clothes. We have to do something.”

  “But are you sure protesting is the right thing?” Daniela asks, swiping back a strand of hair. “Think about it like this: you know how new teachers or subs sometimes talk to me really slowly, with huge facial expressions because they think I don’t speak English?”