by Jeff High
“Oh, my!” She bellowed.
I turned to see her with one hand over her heart and holding Hiram’s Bible with the other. She was looking at the inscription written inside the front cover.
“I know this handwriting.”
Before I could respond, I heard the sound of Matthew ripping the brown paper away from the wall. Using the hooked end of his crowbar, he cleared all of it down in one long sweeping movement.
Before us lay the dusty risers of a narrow stairwell.
Chapter 44
MELODIES
CONNIE, ARE YOU OKAY?”
Her face was framed in a demoralizing fear. I moved quickly and helped her ease into Matthew’s desk chair. She held up her hand, signaling that she was alright.
“I just had a start, that’s all.”
“What happened?”
She again waved her hand in a gesture of dismissal. “It’s not important right this minute.”
Matthew had gathered two flashlights and joined us. “Everything okay here? His concern was genuine, but his eager face was easily read.
“You two go see what’s up there,” said Connie. “If there are no dead bodies, yell down to me and I’ll come up.”
“And if there is a dead body?”
“Then yell run.”
Matthew and I exchanged wry grins. “You sure you’re okay?”
“Go, go, go.”
Matthew went first.
There were two dormer windows in the third story attic that partially illuminated the room above us. Using the flashlights, we climbed up the tight stairwell to a floored area about twenty feet square. In the center of it, covered in an undisturbed layer of dust, was a writer’s desk with a short wooden filing cabinet. Centered among the things on the top of the desk was a vintage Victrola phonograph.
Matthew and I looked at each other with speechless fascination. Undoubtedly, this was the same phonograph in the picture of Hiram taken that long-ago day at the railroad yard. I probed my light into the far corners of the room to see if anything grisly presented itself. There was only an overturned wooden chair, a small pile of deteriorating newspapers, and the musty air of nearly a century.
I went to the stairwell and called out to Connie.
“It’s all clear. Come on up.”
“What’s up there?” Came the cautious reply.
“Just come on up. You’ll see.”
I returned to Matthew who was examining an elaborate record case, one of several stacked beside the phonograph. He opened the cover, revealing a felt lined interior. Inside was an odd sized vinyl record. He carefully removed it and examined both sides.
“What do you make of it?”
“Well, at first I thought it was a record. But I think it’s something a little more. I think it’s an original master. He glanced back at the table. There looks to be about ten or so of them.”
“I guess that explains the elaborate packaging. Who recorded it?”
“There’s a printed record label. Okeh Records. Never heard of them. There’s also some handwriting on it.” Matthew wiped it lightly with his finger. “Looks like it says, ‘The Man I Love,’ April 19, 1927.”
“That sound’s familiar.”
“It’s an old Gershwin song. Billie Holiday made it famous in the forties.”
Curious, I opened the next record case. The handwriting on it was the song, “It Had To Be You.”
“These are some pretty big tunes. Do you see anything that tells who the singer is?”
Matthew shook his head. He placed the record on the table and turned his attention toward the filing cabinet. In the top drawer he found a cardboard shoe box. It was secured with a string which he carefully untied. Inside was a cache of vintage photographs along with an assortment of papers and envelopes. The photo on top was of an exquisitely beautiful young black woman standing on stage and holding a microphone. She was clearly posing for the camera. Matthew held it to light. “Look at this, Luke. You see what I see?”
I took the photo from him and examined it. “That’s the dress, isn’t it? The one in the trunk.”
“I think it is.”
“She must be our singer. But I don’t recognize her.”
From behind me came a low, somber voice. “I do.”
I had been so engrossed that I had not heard Connie approach. I handed the picture to her. “So, pray tell. Who is it?”
She looked at it sternly. But soon the hard lines melted into a disbelieving smile. “That’s my grandmother, Vera Coleman. Her maiden name was Vera Jamison.” Connie took the picture and fanned herself with it, needing a moment to reconcile her thoughts with this revelation. She looked at it again; this time, hesitant and puzzled.
“Connie, are you sure? Because, this doesn’t make any sense.”
“I’ll admit, it’s a quantum leap from this to an A.M.E. minister’s wife. But that’s her.”
“Something doesn’t add up here. That dress she’s wearing was in the attic trunk in Charleston along with the Bible. What would Hiram Hatcher be doing with it?”
Matthew spoke before Connie could answer. “Maybe that’s because she had a double.” While Connie and I were talking, Matthew had continued to peruse the photographs. He pulled one from the stack and handed it to me. It was of two teenage girls standing in choir robes. Penciled on the back were the names Vera and Violet Jamison, 1923. The photo was small and somewhat faded. But the reality was unmistakably clear. The two girls were biological twins.
“Let me see that,” said Connie, practically snatching it from his hand.
“You didn’t know your Grandmother was a twin?”
“I never knew she had a sibling at all. Much less a twin sister. There was never a mention of her, ever.”
With the face of a lost child, Connie studied the picture. It would seem that for her, the room began to fall into a slow spin. Speechless, she looked at me, then at Matthew, and then back at the photo. I was silent, dumbfounded; but Matthew had the presence of mind to gather the overturned chair and bring it to her. Reflexively, she sat; her mind occupied far away from this small attic room. She was retracing an entire lifetime through a completely different lens. I knelt beside her and held her hand.
“Connie? Talk to me. Tell me what you are thinking.”
She looked at me blankly as if she hadn’t heard me. Then, she spoke with quiet resolve. “I’m thinking this is not the day I imagined when I first woke up this morning.”
During this time Matthew had returned to the box and continued his perusing of its contents. “There seem to be quite a few official documents here. Why don’t we return to the study to examine them?” We all agreed.
I went first to help Connie negotiate the steep, narrow steps. Matthew followed carrying the box and a few of the record cases. He cleared his desk and set the box on it. But before continuing, he turned to Connie.
“Mrs. Thompson, can I get you anything? A glass of water, some tea?”
She spoke with dry resolve. “Thank you, no. I think I’m about to swallow a heavy dose of reality. That should hold me.” Connie’s no-nonsense persona was making a quick recovery.
Matthew began to lay all the documents and photographs in neat rows on his desk. Included with the photographs were several playbills from various Chicago night clubs, a birth certificate, a marriage license, numerous letters, and finally, a death certificate. At first, what connected them was unclear. But over the next hour, the three of us uncovered a long-hidden story about Hiram Hatcher and the woman he had fallen in love with.
Connie’s Grandmother, Vera Jamison did, in fact, have a twin sister named Violet. The two sisters were from a modestly prosperous family in a small Ohio town. Vera married Rayford Coleman who was several years older, and the two of them moved to Xenia, Ohio where he attended seminary. But her twin sister, Violet chose a very different path.
Violet wanted to be a professional singer and moved to Chicago where she eventually found work performing in night clubs
. It was there that she gained the attention of the enterprising Hiram Hatcher. We already knew Hiram was a frequent visitor to Chicago where he conducted his business dealings with the bootleg industry and perhaps Al Capone in particular.
The letters pieced everything together. They were both from Violet to Hiram and, oddly, from Hiram to Violet; the latter being collected and saved by Hiram after her death. Initially, it was quite clear that Hiram saw Violet Jamison as an undiscovered diamond. He more or less became her sponsor; buying her clothes, using his influence to get her night club appearances, and ultimately securing a recording contract for her with Okeh records. A quick internet search revealed that Okeh was actually a subsidiary of Columbia records and modern-day Sony Music. With Hiram’s help, Violet Jamison was on the verge of hitting the big time.
Along the way, what had started as a business arrangement apparently grew into an infatuation and ultimately a love affair. In July of 1927, Hiram received a letter from Violet telling him that she was pregnant and that he was the unquestioned father. The baby was due in January. She wanted to know if he intended to marry her. He wrote her back and said no.
Although the exact events in the following months remained unclear, there were several more letters from Violet pleading for Hiram to marry her. There were no responses. Despite this, it seemed evident that Hiram was often in Chicago and that the two of them were still lovers. Given her obvious maternal status, either Hiram or Okeh records decided not to launch Violet’s recording career until after the child was born. But that never happened.
Violet went into early labor in December and apparently, from the onset, things did not go well. This was the reason Hiram rushed to Chicago in December 1927; taking Jessica Ravenel, John Harris’s grandmother, along with him to help out. The marriage license we found was dated December 12, 1927. The next few documents in Violet’s life told a grim story. She gave birth to Maylene Anne Hatcher on December 13, 1927. Four days later, on December 17, Violet died. Cause of death was noted as complications of pregnancy.
There were several letters from Rayford Coleman to Hiram revealing that he and Vera agreed, at Hiram’s request, to adopt Maylene. The wording revealed that the relationship between the two men was strained at best. Rayford didn’t approve of Hiram. His angst at Hiram for his role in the unfortunate death of his sister-in-law was only thinly veiled. But it appeared that the death of Violet had left Hiram a broken man.
Much of what occurred between Hiram and Rayford is speculative. But the three of us agreed that Rayford and Vera consented to move to Watervalley, likely at Hiram’s insistence. Hiram was fundamental in underwriting the building of a modest chapel for launching Rayford’s ministry. Whether Hiram saw himself as an unfit father or whether he foresaw the social challenges his mixed-race daughter would face is uncertain. Even with light brown skin, Maylene would be viewed as a black child. In the segregated world of the 1920’s, Hiram must have concluded that being raised under the stable love and security of Rayford and Vera was best for her.
Perhaps Hiram’s original intent was to continue his life in Watervalley just as before, knowing that his daughter was nearby. But very soon after, it seems, he had a crisis of conscience. He had the basement bootlegging room and the springhouse pipe bricked up. He sold his business and his house, and shortly thereafter moved away. It seemed, Hiram had lost his taste for dealing in illegitimate enterprises.
The last letter from Rayford conveyed a mutual agreement between the two men to dispose of anything associated with Violet’s past. To my thinking, this seemed an insensible thing. But the social norms of the 1920’s were vastly different. Perhaps the society of that time would have condemned Maylene’s birth with much greater shame, placing an unfair stigma on the child. I could only conclude that this was done for her protection.
But somehow, Hiram couldn’t completely let go. In the attic trunk in Charleston, he had kept the dress of the woman who had bewitched him and the bible from the man who had helped him, along with an apology for not wanting to totally say goodbye. Perhaps his dreams for Violet had too greatly consumed him and the magic of her voice was something he simply could not destroy.
Hiram never returned to Watervalley and likely never saw his daughter again. He may have tried to correspond with Rayford or even send money, but Rayford Coleman took the answers to those questions to his grave.
It seemed that Matthew, Connie, and I had been talking non-stop for more than an hour; each of us injecting one revelation after another into the story unfolding before us. We had found consensus on the major events and mutually dismissed the smaller turns and motivations that could only be left to conjecture. Having expended our words, a reflective lull suddenly consumed our small threesome. We sat and looked at each other in a mix of wonder and fatigue.
Connie broke the silence. “There’s one thing I still don’t quite understand.”
“Which is?” I responded.
“The twenty-two percent Portuguese thing. Where did that come from?”
“Have you heard back from Estelle’s DNA test.”
“She got the results this morning. We are a near perfect match.”
“Then it must be from Hiram,” I concluded.
“But Hatcher isn’t an Iberian name.”
Matthew responded. “Actually, his real name, as best we know, was Emanuel Lorenzo Hatcher. Hiram was a nickname.”
“Good heavens, then!” Exhorted Connie.
“What?”
“Emanuel and Lorenzo are the most common Portuguese names out there. That explains everything.”
I looked at her incredulously. “Do you just sit around all day Googling this kind of stuff?”
She ignored me. “The point is, I guess Estelle and I are going to have to get our heads around the fact that the Hiram Hatcher was our biological grandfather.”
Matthew’s face was consumed in a broad, contented smile “More than that, I’m afraid, Mrs. Thompson, it would seem that you and my children are distant cousins.”
After a moment’s contemplation, Connie returned the same gladdened smile. “Yes. Yes, it does.” She lifted her chin, clearly delighted. “That being the case, I think you should start calling me Connie.”
“Matthew,” I said soberly. “Maybe this is it. Maybe this is what Emily was referring to...about finding family.”
He beamed so grandly I thought he might start levitating. “Yes, Luke. I think you’re right.”
Wearing irrepressible smiles, we were absorbed in the wonder of this new reality. It seemed that the three of us were consumed in a moment of indescribable satisfaction; an unspoken, gratifying awareness that the fullness of time had provided clarity and understanding where there had been mystery and confusion.
Grandly at ease, I spoke playfully. “I noticed the resemblance between you and the twins months ago.”
Chapter 45
REVELATION
DRIVEN BY A BOILING curiosity, Matthew and I returned to the attic and retrieved the phonograph. After a modest cleaning of the dust, I positioned one of the records on the turntable and rotated the crank. Matthew placed the needle, and to our delight, it worked. What we heard was nothing short of amazing.
The voice of Violet Jamison was deep, rich, and sultry. She was mesmerizing with a near four octave range; easily floating in the stratosphere or flowing effortlessly into a throaty, stylistic contralto. One after another we listened to each recording, absorbed and captivated by her seemingly celestial yet seductive singing. And as I listened, I couldn’t help but wonder what fame she might have attained had her life gone differently; about what might have been had time and chance not taken it all away. With what I had heard over the last hour, I could only suspect that she might have been practically immortal.
It was mid-afternoon by the time we finished the last one. Despite the exhilaration of the past hour, the day had other demands. Connie asked Matthew about revealing everything to Estelle. He seemed somewhat surprised at her request.
“Connie, it’s your story now, yours and Estelle’s. By all means, tell all of it. And tell it to whomever.” He seemed sublimely contented. The three of us shared an unspoken awareness that we had witnessed something incredible. Now bonded in mutual wonder, we made our way downstairs.
When we arrived at the entrance hall, Matthew turned to Connie. “I’d like to arrange a time for you to come back. It would seem that we have much to talk about, and I would like for you to meet my children.”
She readily agreed. Then, Matthew added. “Perhaps you can bring your sister as well.”
Before responding, Connie discerningly looked to the side. “Let’s just start with me. We can expand it from there.”
Though noticeably puzzled, Matthew conceded with a quick nod. He turned to me and gratefully shook my hand. “Thanks, Luke, for everything.” His entire demeanor was one of temperate reflection. While the events of the day had not brought him happiness, they had given him solace. Perhaps his troubled heart could finally begin to mend.
We bid our goodbyes, and I walked Connie to her car under a cloudless blue June sky. The savage storm from earlier had washed the haze from the heavens, illuminating the lush green day in a softer, more brilliant light.
Admittedly, we were both still a little stunned. “Well, Connie. I normally don’t like to talk about these things, but now I know where that creepy tornado of songs came from when I was here Christmas Eve. I think your grandmother’s spirit has been trying to get somebody’s attention for a long time. She sure got mine.”
Connie looked down reflectively and gushed a small laugh. “It’s funny you would mention Christmas Eve. I knew something wasn’t right even then.”
“In what way?”
“You remember how I shied away from meeting Matthew that night?”
“Actually, I do. I remember thinking it odd but not worth questioning.”
