A Commonplace Book of Pie by Kate Lebo Page A

marble flotsam only God could pinch from the froth. Sister Maria in her tent, contemplating a month of daylight darkness ahead, remembered the seven lemons in her trunk. She squeezed them into yolks and sugar, then poured the filling into an improvised crust of crackers. Taking inspiration from her new home’s dour weather, she beat sweetened egg whites until they puffed like clouds and gently piled them over the bright yellow filling, obscuring it from view.
    The sisters loved her creation and fought for the biggest pieces. Sister Maria disliked the sound of raised voices, so she walked into the woods to leave the din behind. As she peered through dripping firs for a glimpse of construction further upriver, she thought about God and said, “You don’t want pie in the sky when you die. You want something here on the ground while you’re still around.”
    Years later, unbeknownst to them both, Muhammad Ali would say the exact same thing after winning a fight in Miami. The sisters campaigned to make this aphorism the motto of the school for girls they planned to construct, and though Home Economics is considered unfeminist and unfashionable these days, some still think that St. Mary’s Academy for Girls should complement their rigorous math and science courses with a lesson on how to whip the perfect whites.
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Cherry
    We have formed our impressions of this most American pie on canned filling. Which is more American? Processed fruit in explosive syrup, or sweating in the sun while balancing on a slender ladder? Each July the cherry pie-lover gathers hard red fruits in her dress until the moment she needs her right hand for balance, then lets go, spills her harvest in the grass where birds can eat the mess. She likes sun hats, tolerates baseball, and does not go to church, but prays when she is afraid of failure or death.
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Peanut Butter
    If you love peanut butter pie, you are either Dolly Parton or someone who loves her.
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Peach
    All peach pie-lovers are men, if only on the inside. I met a peach pie-lover from Seattle once. She said that adding cayenne to cinnamon and consuming it in a peach pie will make you grow hair on your palms. Some people are scared to love peach pie for this very reason. Those who aren’t afraid join a long line of people who know that there is nothing more delicious than loving what you fear. Even if desire makes you undesirable. Even if it grows a beard on your high five.
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Vanilla Cream
    If vanilla cream pie is your favorite, you probably also like horses, getting lost in your hometown, abandoned houses, farmers markets, insensible shoes, and double-tall lattes with a splash of, well, you know.
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Apple
    Apple pie invented itself on the outskirts of what would become Hoboken, New Jersey on the afternoon of August 5, 1717. The apple orchards, too, were accidental, carried afar in the bellies of birds and bears and other four-legged fruit-eating animals, the seeds polished and shined by the intestines of their hosts and planted in spoor on new ground. When apple trees began to blossom among the inedible deciduous woods, settlers raced to cut the alders and underbrush away so the apples could have the full portion of sunlight they hoped their God owed them.
    Back then, apple trees did not fruit every year. The settlers blamed themselves for this: in their greed, they had picked the first apple trees to near death. That the trees chose to hibernate every other year seemed an act of self preservation. The settlers resolved to be patient.
    1717 was an off year, so a farm wife named Nancy Cottonwood retrieved a basket of apples stored in her cellar from the previous harvest. In the cool darkness the apples had kept remarkably well, but were no longer attractive. To appease their vanity, she cut them up. To honor their barren parents, she removed the tough core and seeds. And because it was the day before Sunday, her day of rest,