The Truth Is the Light by Vanessa Davie Griggs Page B

not,” he lied.
    â€œHe seems to be a nice man,” Johnnie Mae said after he was gone.
    â€œFor an old man,” Countess said. “I think he lets me win, though.”
    â€œIs that right?”
    â€œYeah. He likes to flirt with me. Letting me win is one of his ways of flirting.”
    â€œWell, Mama. He’s a nice-looking man.”
    â€œDo you know how old that man is?”
    â€œSeventy maybe,” Johnnie Mae said with a hunch. “Eighty at the most.”
    â€œThe man is close to a hundred,” Countess said with a slight chuckle.
    Johnnie Mae laughed, more at how her mother said it than what she’d said. “Mama, I don’t think he’s close to one hundred. Do you see how he gets around?”
    â€œIt’s because of what he eats and drinks. And he says he’s never smoked, not even when he was younger. He’s some kind of expert on the body. Like one of the nurses here liked to eat ice. He told her she needed more iron and that’s why her body was craving ice. She laughed at him, but when she started taking iron supplements, she stopped eating ice. We were glad about that because she was getting on our last nerves. I mean, the woman was an ice addict. Every time you saw her, she had ice crunching on it. Ranny can even look at a person’s fingernails and determine things going on in their body.”
    â€œOkay, Mama.”
    â€œNo, seriously. Most of the folks he tells stuff to here are the younger folks. ’Cause you know the older folks here have their share of ailments. The receptionist that works here, Karen is her name.”
    â€œCarolyn,” Johnnie Mae said, correcting her mother.
    â€œYeah, Carolyn. Anyway, she was handing somebody something one day and complaining about how tired she was. He asked her if he could look at her fingernails. He said her nails were flat and thin. He then asked if she had problems with her thumbnails splitting oddly. She said both her thumbnails tended to split across in the middle of her thumb and it could be painful because it wasn’t where she could take it off until it grew out. You know what he told Karen?”
    Johnnie Mae started to correct her mother again on Carolyn’s name, then decided it really didn’t matter. “What?”
    â€œThat she had a vitamin and mineral deficiency. He asked her if she was tired a lot, then told her she needed multivitamins with zinc and B something or other.”
    â€œB6?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œB12?”
    â€œYeah, that’s it. He told her he thought she had a B12 deficiency. Well, she didn’t believe him. You could tell it by the way she was trying to humor him. But about a week later, she came and told him she’d gone to her doctor again and specifically asked them to check her B12 levels, and it turns out that was her problem. Ranny had told her she needed to eat more meat since that’s a source of B12. He may be old, but he’s a smart old man, that’s for sure.”
    â€œInteresting,” Johnnie Mae said.
    â€œYep. He has this beautiful wooden box in his room. I saw it last week. It’s one of those Wings of Grace boxes.”
    Johnnie Mae smiled. “Oh, so you remember the Wings of Grace box from some years back? He has a box that reminds you of that box?”
    â€œNo. He has one.”
    â€œYou mean he has one that’s similar to it.... It reminds you of it.”
    â€œNo. I mean he has one. Now you’re starting to act just like he did. Like I don’t know what I’m talking about. I told him I’d seen that box before . . . that it had wings on the inside of the lid.”
    â€œSo you’re telling me that he has a box, a wooden box, and when you open it up, there are wings etched on the inside of the lid?”
    â€œThat’s exactly what I’m telling you. It’s just like the one you had that time. You remember. Well, he has it now.”
    â€œMama,