Getting value of specific key in a dictionary

I have a dictionary like so:

li = {'a': 'apple', 'b': 'benana', 'c': 'cherry'}

So I have:

>>> for key, value in li.items():
...     print key, value
... 
a apple
c cherry
b benana
>>> 

I want to say:

if param == 'a':
    print value # Here I want the value of `a` key only!

I want to print apple only.