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it had belonged to Lottie alone, but now Maggie was sharing it. Life, she felt, didn’t get much better than that.
    They began bouncing on the branches, and soon the pecans fell like large green hailstones. They were getting the job done in half the time it usually took Lottie, and Maggie was feeling terribly proud, when a scream cut through the still morning air. Mama had seen Maggie in the tree and came running from the house, yelling that it wasn’t safe. Ralph, seeing his home and his family’s only source of income disappearing before his eyes, began a frantic climb up the tree to get Maggie. Because he looked so scared, she came down to where he could reach her, and soon she was in her weeping mama’s arms. No one seemed to notice that there was another little girl in the tree.
    Years later, Maggie realized Ralph had never said it wasn’t safe for his own daughter to shake the pecans down because he was afraid to, and she wondered what had gone through Lottie’s mind while she was up in the tree, alone and ignored. But at the time, Maggie looked up at Lottie still high in her perch and took it as a token of her friend’s total superiority to her humble self. Lottie was the leader in all their games, bigger, stronger, and smarter than she, so it made sense that Lottie was allowed to stay up in the sky, mistress of all she surveyed, while Maggie was brought back to the ground.
             
    After the nuts were gathered, the men took them to the kitchen where Lottie’s mama, Charlie Mae, set Maggie and Lottie to the task of hulling them and picking out the meat.
    To Maggie the kitchen was a place of alchemy where Charlie Mae took raw ingredients and turned them into high rich cakes and pies oozing with fruit and spice. “That child should have been born a darky,” Mama said, when talking about Maggie’s fascination with all things culinary. But that wasn’t the only reason Maggie helped. The more work she did, the sooner Lottie would be finished with her chores and they could ramble off on their endless rounds of the farm and the forests that surrounded it.
    Lottie hated kitchen chores. Worst of all she hated hulling pecans, because it was fussy work, and her hands were too big for it. But the results were worth it because when the nuts lay in a mound on the wooden counter, Charlie Mae would use them in the fruitcakes Maggie’s mama gave as Christmas presents every year. The recipe had been in Mama’s family for generations, and something must have gotten left out, because the cakes were nasty. But Mama handed them out like crown jewels.
    The finished fruitcakes might be awful, but the raw batter was ambrosia to Lottie, who loved sweets. The girls had an elaborate system worked out for stealing it. They waited until Charlie Mae had beaten the butter, sugar, and eggs into a pale yellow fluff. Then Maggie would find the sharpest knife in the drawer and say, “Charlie Mae, let me chop the fruit.” While Charlie Mae dropped everything to grab the knife away from her, Lottie would stick a cup into the bowl, scoop out a heaping mound of the rich mess, and hide it in the pantry. Later they would retrieve it and share the sugary goo. Maggie was never sure whether it was the crime they pulled off or the booty itself that pleased Lottie so much. They both knew Lottie never could have done it on her own. Maggie was Lottie’s protection against Charlie Mae’s belt. If Charlie Mae had caught Lottie messing up Miss Carolyn’s Christmas cakes she would have beaten her, but if Maggie was in on it they’d get off with a tongue lashing.
    So it had started way back then, Lottie using Maggie to get what she couldn’t get on her own, and Maggie accepting it because, for reasons that were impossible to understand, the world was set up so Lottie needed her.
             
    T HE PECAN TREE was behind Maggie. It wouldn’t be long now. A minute later she reached the six steps that led up to the back porch of the