A Song for You

by Robyn Crawford

  An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

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  Copyright © 2019 by Robyn Crawford

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  Excerpt on this page from “A Song for You,” words and music by Leon Russell. Copyright © 1970 Irving Music, Inc. Copyright renewed. All rights reserved. Used by permission. Reprinted by permission of Hal Leonard LLC.

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  ISBN 9781524742843 (hardcover)

  ISBN 9781524742867 (ebook)

  While the author has made every effort to provide accurate telephone numbers, internet addresses, and other contact information at the time of publication, neither the publisher nor the author assumes any responsibility for errors or for changes that occur after publication. Further, the publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

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  To my mom, Janet; brother, Marty; and sister, Robina, for your undying love. You are always with me.

  To the most amazing beings, my children, Gillian and Jeremy. You make every day entirely brighter. You are my greatest love of all.

  And finally, to my one and only. The one with whom I live adventurously, lay my head next to at night, and awaken to at daybreak. My endless love, Lisa. I still see your face from the first time we met and I draped my scarf around your neck. You are everything.

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Introduction

  One The First Time I Met Whitney Elizabeth Houston

  Two Like an Angel

  Three Love = Love

  Four Separation Anxiety

  Five The Future Is Now

  Six Nobody Loves Me Like You Do

  Seven You Give Good Love

  Eight Introducing Whitney Houston

  Nine The Greatest Drug Tour

  Ten The Moment of Truth

  Eleven Tell On Your Damned Self

  Twelve Moving Fast at Twice the Speed

  Thirteen Can I Be Me?

  Fourteen From Sea to Shining Sea

  Fifteen I Will Always Love You

  Sixteen The Bodyguard World Tour

  Seventeen Four-Letter Word

  Eighteen The Trouble with Angels

  Nineteen Exhale

  Twenty SOS

  Twenty-One My Love Is Your Love

  Twenty-Two 2000

  Twenty-Three California Dreamin’

  Twenty-Four Life

  Epilogue

  Photographs

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Introduction

  Why now? Why did I make the decision to write this book when I could have remained silent for the rest of my days, keeping my memories all to myself? If you are a fan of Whitney Houston, you probably know my name. Google me, and you’ll see my face at events and my name in articles.

  Whitney and I met as teenagers and spent the next twenty-two years together as she became one of the most popular and beloved global artists of our generation. It was the relationship that would shape my young adult years, professionally and personally. Ours is a story of loyalty and trust—of two women who made a pact to protect and rely on each other. We shared a dream that became a journey, and that journey took us from East Orange, New Jersey, to New York City and then around the world, meeting superstars and heads of state. This is a story of manipulation, control, hunger for power, inexperience, race, AIDS, mental illness, the pressure the entertainment industry places on women, the bonds of family, and the importance of putting oneself first. Above all, it is a story of enduring friendship.

  Some have said that I have experienced more than my share of loss. In examining my life, so many memories returned, both beautiful and painful. Writing this book forced me to confront the reality of death, and relive the losses of my mother, my brother, and my best friend. The process allowed me—drove me—to grieve, to face sorrow, something I previously worked hard to bury. But it also provided the opportunity to get to know my loved ones better, and to appreciate what I learned from each of them.

  Believe me, I’ve done my best to stay out of the spotlight, keeping quiet while others painted their own pictures of me and of us. In the nineteen years since I left Whitney’s company I have been pursued relentlessly to share my story. And since her death and that of her daughter, I have been saddened and frustrated by the way she and her legacy have been misrepresented.

  I believe it is my duty to honor my friend and to clarify the many inaccuracies about myself and about who Whitney was. I feel compelled to remind people of her greatness, to lift her remarkable legacy. The Whitney I know was bighearted, determined, unselfish, private, hilarious, and confident in her gifts.

  I hope to help readers understand and recognize fully the person behind that face, voice, and image. Yes, in the end it was tragic, but the dream and the rise were beautiful. I owe it to my friend to share her story, my story. Our story. And I hope that in doing so, I can set us both free.

  One

  The First Time I Met Whitney Elizabeth Houston

  In the summer of 1980 I rode my black Kabuki twenty-two-speed bike across East Orange. The phone had gotten me out of bed, but the wind in my face was waking me up. Coach Clark, my high school basketball coach, had called to tell me that she had a job for me at the East Orange Community Development center, and within minutes, I was out the door. I was starting my second year of college in the fall, and I owed it to Coach Clark to show. I raced to Main Street, the summer sun beginning to pulse in the sky.

  I sped up to the glass-front building, jumped off my bike, and walked it into a dimly lit space crowded with people, tables, and chairs lined up against the walls. I found Coach Clark down the hall in the back, and she smiled, gave me a big hug, and then turned and handed me a stack of papers to distribute. Clark could have tapped anyone for the job, but she knew she could count on me.

  I’ve always been vain about my hair, and in those days, I would wash it and then beg my little sister, Robina, affectionately called Bina, to braid it. Other times I’d set it on pink foam rollers; once I took them out, my coils would loosen, and by the third day my Afro would be amazing. It was day three, so I felt cute in my green shorts the color of grass, light green T-shirt, white Nike sneakers, and pristine white tube socks.

  I walked around the room carrying a stack of camp counselor enrollment forms and clutching a bunch of pens. Then I came across a girl I’d never seen before. I didn’t notice her at first because she was sitting in the back against the wall. But I paused as I handed her the paperwork: She simply stopped me in my tracks.

  The girl wore a red-blue-and-gray-plaid silk blouse; slim-fitting knee-length shorts; and red-striped Adidas Gazelles. She had a gold watch necklace around her neck, and her sandy brown hair was pulled back, topped
by a visor emblazoned with the Red Cross logo. Her skin was peachy brown, and her eyes caught the misty light.

  “What’s your name?” I asked.

  “Whitney Elizabeth Houston,” she said.

  I found her response humorous, different. Who gives their first, middle, and last names? I asked where she lived, and she said Doddtown, across from the McDonald’s. My cousins lived right near there, and I often spent the night with them. I’d worked at that very McDonald’s throughout my junior year of high school. Later that day, I learned she attended an all-girls private school and was a singer. Her mother had founded the Sweet Inspirations, background singers to big stars like Elvis Presley and Aretha Franklin, and her cousin was Dionne Warwick.

  Before I moved on, I gave her one last look and told her I’d keep an eye out for her. I don’t know why I felt the need to say that, but I did.

  How had I never seen nor heard of her?

  Summer counselors took kids to participate in activities in various East Orange parks. I chose to work with kids aged six to eleven in Columbian Park, which happened to be near my high school, on the side of town where Whitney lived, so coincidentally she chose the same. I worked the morning session, so by midday I was free for basketball and able to run full-court games with others at Columbian in the afternoons. Whitney was scheduled in the slot after me, so I’d pass the campers on to her and go do my thing. When I’d come back from playing ball, she’d be dismissing the campers and we started spending time together.

  I’d just turned nineteen and Whitney was about to turn seventeen. I had no idea where things with her were going to go, but I did know that the summer of 1980 was shaping up to be some kind of wonderful. Whitney Elizabeth was sweet and low-key but alluring. She carried herself with outward grace and confidence, yet underneath she was like every other young woman at that age. She was strikingly beautiful, but she didn’t feel that way, always picking apart her looks. I couldn’t understand where all this insecurity was coming from.

  One day early on in our friendship, I rolled up to her mother’s midsize white Cape Cod house. As I pulled up in my mom’s car, there she was, standing in the doorway just above the steps, slender in a T-shirt with a cotton sweater tied around her neck. Sure that she could see my face, I smiled. She was wearing the worst pair of jeans I’d ever seen. They were narrow at the top and wide from the knees down. I’m certain she saw me grinning as she walked toward the car, because once inside she said, “What?”

  I measured each word, careful not to offend. “Wow,” I said. “Those jeans. They’re okay . . . but . . . Why are you wearing them?”

  She pressed me and finally I blurted out, “We gotta get you some jeans.”

  “Well what kind of jeans do I have to get?” she asked.

  “Some straight-leg jeans.”

  Whitney proceeded to tell me that her torso was too short, that her waist was too high, and that her knees turned inward, making her knock-kneed. She went on and on, and it bothered me to hear her speak about herself like that. Just the month before, Whitney had told me, she and her mom were standing on the corner of Fifty-Seventh and Seventh Avenue in front of Carnegie Hall when a man approached them and said, “A modeling agency upstairs is looking for a girl just like you.” Click Models had signed her that very day.

  Now, sitting in the driver’s seat, I said, “You’re a junior model. Haven’t you seen Cheryl Tiegs, or the Charlie commercial with Shelley Hack in those dark toothpick jeans with a stride that must be at least three yards long? That’s you!”

  Whitney smiled and seemed to relax. Her smile was like rays of light. I was happy I could bring that out in her. Whenever I looked through my brother Marty’s fashion magazines, I’d find a smiling Cheryl Tiegs, looking happy, confident, and fresh. People described her as the girl next door. Cheryl didn’t live anywhere near my house, but Whitney did, and I wanted her to feel as beautiful as she was.

  Moments later, we were on our way to purchase Whitney’s first pair of slim-fitting jeans. These were the days of name brands like Jordache, Sergio Valente, and Gloria Vanderbilt. Most of the girls I knew went for the over-the-top pocket designs, but I never followed the trends. I was straight-up a Levi’s 501, Lee, or Wrangler girl, shopping at Universal Uniform Sales on Broad Street in downtown Newark. I took Whitney to the Gap in Willowbrook Mall and picked out eight pairs of straight-legs for her to try. We settled on the darkest blue pair, long enough for her to have a little cuff just above her Gazelles. We grabbed a lighter pair as well, and after that, she wore those jeans all the time. The Whitney Houston that the world would come to know in shimmering gowns was, in reality, a simple, easygoing, comfort-seeking lover of jeans, T-shirts, button-downs, and sneakers.

  This was a happy time for me, having fun with a new friend, working, and playing basketball. It hadn’t always been this way, especially when I was young. During the time I was two to six years old, my family had lived in California. They were hard times for us, despite the fact that Los Angeles was supposed to fulfill my mother’s dream of the white picket fence. While my father was still in the army, she followed her brother and his wife when they relocated from Newark. Daddy was in the service from 1958 to 1963, serving part of that time as a paratrooper in Vietnam. He never once talked about it with us. Shortly after being discharged, he joined Mom in Los Angeles. But her dream soon went awry as his infidelity and abuse began and he lost his job. Then there was the puppy.

  The incident with our puppy was my first encounter with loss. On Christmas, when I was five years old, Bina, Marty, and I were opening our presents. Next thing we knew, our father reached into the pocket of his American Airlines jacket and pulled out a wiggly little light brown puppy. We screamed with joy.

  The next day we played with neighborhood kids behind our building, the puppy frolicking and climbing all over us. Daddy came outside on his way to work. He climbed into his white Bonneville and just before closing the door called out to us kids to step aside. We did as we were told, but none of us thought to pick up the puppy and suddenly I saw the most awful thing: Daddy put the car in reverse and inadvertently crushed Pup Pup. He felt awful about it, calling to our mother to bring us inside so he could clean it up before heading off to work.

  My parents moved into a single-level three-bedroom house with white stucco that sparkled in the blazing sun. My brother, Marty, had his own room in the front, and I shared the back room with my baby sister, Bina. I thought my parents were rich until one day my mother overheard me talking with a playmate about what we had and shouted out the window, “Be quiet. We’re eating out of one pot.”

  One day when we got home, my mother told us to stay in the house. It was getting late and the news reported that there was rioting in Watts. Daddy announced that he was going out with my uncle to see what they could get, taking advantage of the chaos. My mother told him she didn’t want him to go out.

  “I don’t want to be here all alone with the kids,” she said. Marty was eight, I was five, and Bina, my parents’ only California baby, was two.

  “I’ll be back,” he said, and went out into the night.

  Mom locked the doors and brought us into Marty’s room to wait for my father’s return. It was dark, but we could see black-and-white cop cars rushing down our residential street. We remained in Marty’s room, crouched down, looking out the window. Looking for my father. Waiting.

  “Dennis. Dennis should be here,” my mother said aloud. She trembled when she was nervous, so her hands were shaking. I cuddled her to help her stay calm. When my father and uncle finally returned, the sky was still black. Their loot consisted of tires, a few radios, and an eight-track player. My mother was unimpressed but relieved, and we all slept in the same room that night.

  My parents argued a lot about money and my father’s infidelities, and he often abused her.

  When I was six years old, my father roughed up my mother so badly with a met
al vacuum cleaner attachment that when the police came, they called an ambulance to take her to the hospital. She returned home with a black eye and a huge scar on her knee that remained for the rest of her life. Once home, she called Marty and me to her bedside, asking, “How would you like to see your grandmother?”

  A few days later, she sneaked my siblings and me out of the house in the wee hours of the morning and we flew back to Newark. By the time we arrived, my father was calling my mother on the phone, apologizing. He drove back east in his white Bonneville, stopping only for gas; she took him back, and the beatings continued.

  My family lived through the Newark riots, too. My father stayed in the house this time. The National Guard stood with rifles outside our door, patrolling the halls and courtyard of our building, and we were not allowed outdoors after four thirty P.M., when streetlights came on.

  All the images of boarded-up storefronts and burned-out buildings faded to the background when, not long after, I witnessed my father throw Mom to the floor and drag her body down the hall of the apartment. I can still see her face and hear her pleading, “Call the police,” as her body and head disappeared from view. That made my mother leave him for the last time, and again we ran from him in the middle of the night.

  Martin Luther King Jr. wrote, “A riot is the language of the unheard.” Some might say my father’s rage was born of the same anger and frustration with discrimination and plain injustice that led Los Angeles and Newark to explode, and while there may be some truth to that, I cannot accept it as an excuse. I will never forget the fear in my mother’s voice and the look in her eyes when he erupted—kicking in doors, grabbing her and throwing her to the floor, hollering and screaming—while Marty and I pleaded for him to stop, and little Bina, disoriented and frightened, extended her arms for one of us to hold and comfort her. Most of Mom’s visible scars went away over time, but invisible ones were imprinted upon her, my brother, my sister, and me.