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her throat, like that of one who is deaf. She sits on her cornhusk-filled mattress, upright, hands resting on her lap. The warders, whose shoes are muffled with swaddling, are adept at peeking through the cell eyeholes just in time to catch and punish profligate behavior: handiwork dashed to the floor, words of protest, rage, and grief scribbled on the whitewashed stone walls.
    â€œâ€˜And where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God:’”
    She begins the lines again. “From the Book of Ruth,” the Quaker lady told her during one of her visits. The choice of Scripture was inadvertent; not knowing the prisoner’s name, race, creed, or age, the woman sat in the corridor, speaking quietly and unseen through the door slit where food is delivered daily. “The Old Testament. Thee must learn thy Bible, child.”
    The lady’s queer Quaker speech remains in Ruth’s ears: thee, thine, thou. “The story tells of the widowed Ruth,” the woman continued in the same hushed tone, “who journeys with her mother-in-law, Naomi, to dwell in an alien land, and is then raised up by marriage to the wealthy and powerful Boaz. Ruth will become the great-grandmother of David, the king. I tell the story to teach thee about overcoming adversity. Ruth was a loyal and loving woman; she did not succumb to temptation nor to vice as thou hast—”
    â€œI am Ruth,” Ruth had suddenly blurted, although she knew that sharing her identity was as forbidden as talking aloud.
    The Quaker lady remained silent, then finally responded with a constrained “Thee mustn’t speak or say thy name. Only the warden can know thy history. It’s for thine own good, girl, so that departing this place, no one shall guess thy past. That is why a sack is placed upon thy head the moment thee enters the gates—”
    â€œBut I’m also a Ruth” had been the stubborn—although hushed—reply, but the lady rejected the effort, proceeding with a placid:
    â€œAnd why thou art conveyed to thy cell blindfolded, why thee and thy fellow penitents are dressed in identical and prison-stitched clothing, why thou dost not know among whom thou lodgest: male, female, old, young … Thee must remain B415 to me.”
    â€œI am Ruth,” was the sullen and louder answer, “dwelling in an alien land.”
    â€œThou blasphemest, child. Now keep silent, or the warders will force me to go.”
    Remembering this exchange, Ruth feels her eyes narrow and her fingers clench. Thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God . She bows her head. Whose God? she wonders. Whose people?
    Something that sounds like a club bangs sharply against the cell’s wood door. The onetime maid-of-all-work leaps up, surprised to see her meal tray sliding inward through the food slot. In her three years in Cherry Hill, she’s never grown accustomed to the arrival of her keepers.
    She takes the tray but doesn’t attempt to peer through the opening. According to prison rules, no words are exchanged. Brown bread, water, a dented metal bowl of meat gristle: She carries the meal back to her bed. The whale-oil lamp sputters, emitting a choking, fish-innard odor that for a moment masks the all-enveloping stench of the prison.
    Thy people shall be my people , she tells herself silently, then, unwittingly and against all better judgment, thinks of her son, her little Cai. Almost five years old, he would be now. Five years this winter. But whether he lives or whether he has died, Ruth doesn’t know.
    While ruth cowers in the upper reaches of the female wing, another prisoner practices his walking in his own quiet cell on the ground floor of the men’s wing. He’s a slight man, thin-boned and sprightly, save for one terrible flaw. He was born with a club foot. Or, rather, no true foot. Where his right heel should be, he has only an ankle, the vestigial right toes