Janet Marie Williams Crawford set about rebuilding her life by going to college, eventually earning a master’s degree; and when I was eleven, we moved to a new place in New Jersey. Two years later, she was excited to find brand-new garden apartments in Kuzuri-Kijiji, at the time the largest housing development built by a black construction company. In Swahili, the name means “Beautiful Village,” and Mom told all her friends about it. Most of them were also single women with children, and they moved in, too.
Growing up, I knew that I was a different kind of girl, and that was all right. While Bina spent her teenage years going to parties, wearing makeup, and flirting with boys, I wasn’t into all that. The only part of my body that I felt at all self-conscious about was my skinny legs, which once led to some guy calling me “Miss Twiggy.”
When I complained to my mother she’d say, “You walk on those legs, don’t you? You run on those legs, and fast, don’t you? You should be grateful.”
On picture day, or whenever I wore my hair down, falling on my shoulders, men would look at me with such desire I would cringe. Losers. I was a child. The minute I left for school I pulled my hair back into a ponytail.
I wanted to be nothing like my father, but you could look in my face and see I was my daddy’s girl. On several occasions, grown men walking down the street, driving trucks or delivering mail, stopped me to ask, “You’re Dennis Crawford’s daughter, aren’t you?”
My father was a standout high school athlete who led the state of New Jersey in yards as a tailback. When it became clear that my brother, Marty, had no interest in sports, I was the one who watched football with him and filled his glass from the beer bar—which I loved doing because it involved jumping up on a chair, pulling the lever forward, tilting the glass, and even taking a sip or two of overflowing foam. A Miami Dolphins fan, he explained to me that it took the Giants a long time to have a black running back and shared other observations on black players and sports. But I also inherited a lot of my father’s competitiveness, and athletic ability and sports came naturally to me.
It was 1974 when I began my freshman year at Barringer High School in Newark. I’d tune in to WABC radio most mornings hoping to hear Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody,” a masterpiece that drove me wild. After school I’d walk home along Park Avenue for miles, using my bus fare for treats. In one area, where Newark meets East Orange, a lot of men would hang out drinking by Cooper’s Liquors & Deli. They would say anything: “Hey, baby. Come here, you sweet girl.” I kept walking. I’d also pass a diner where this woman sold delicious sweet potato pie that wasn’t orange, because, as she explained, it was made with white sweet potatoes instead of yams. I became such a regular that as soon as I walked in the door she’d hand me a slice.
On Saturday mornings, I rose early and jogged from East Orange all the way to the North Ward of Newark and down to Branch Brook Park and back. I rode my bike as far as my legs would take me, first on one with a black banana seat and later on my beloved black Kabuki with gold letters. I would go anywhere just to make my world seem bigger.
Looking back on my childhood, I remember feeling conflicted about the concept of love. I knew my mom and dad loved me, but the love between them was hardly inspiring. I knew I wanted something other than the paradigm my family had set up, and I found myself praying and striving for a different kind of life and a different kind of love.
Those prayers came true, in the way they do for teenagers, anyway, when I first saw Raynard Jefferson while I was sitting on a swing outside my house. As he walked by, we locked eyes. I was able to read his lips as he asked his cousin Drayton, “Who’s that?” That’s all it took.
I was fifteen, and Raynard was my first love. He was quiet and good-looking, was my height, and had sweet lips. He was the third and youngest child in a family of boys. We met not long after one of his brothers was murdered, and Raynard was still experiencing the loss. I’d come along just in time to help ease his sadness. He attended Seton Hall Prep, miles away in West Orange, so every morning I’d rise a little earlier so that I could see him off at the train station, which was five minutes from my house. Every afternoon on my way home from school, I’d stop at Raynard’s, where we’d spend most of our time in his room on the third floor, reading dirty magazines featuring the best lovemaking positions and talking about eloping to California. Raynard was beautiful: He touched and treated me with kindness and respect. I loved and cared for him then, and my fifteen-year-old self always will.
Mom wasn’t all that enthusiastic about my budding relationship, and she told me so. She said I was too emotionally attached and that Raynard reminded her of my father, though I don’t know in what way. Nevertheless, she allowed me to make my own choices, and I chose to continue seeing him. When she asked if I needed birth control, my response was, “When I’m ready to lie down, I’ll be ready to have a baby.” Raynard and I made out all the time, but we never went “all the way,” because I was fearful of becoming pregnant. When my mother became pregnant at seventeen, my paternal grandmother had insisted that my father, who was eighteen, marry her.
We experienced the consequences firsthand. Their marriage was meant to save both families’ reputations, offer stability, and pardon the sin of premarital sex. Instead, for over a decade, my mother was disrespected, physically abused, and cheated on while bound to a man she would not have chosen otherwise.
Luckily, my relationship with Raynard stayed healthy, and I had plenty of other things to focus on, too. My high school was a hothouse for promising young athletes, and colleges recruited heavily from the football, basketball, and baseball teams. NFL Hall of Famer Andre Tippett was in my health class; I let him copy off my paper once.
I was an active kid—always with a bicycle or a basketball, and I ran everywhere—but I wasn’t a jock. Marty—who played the clarinet, cello, and tenor sax—was my inspiration, and like any scrappy little sister, I wanted to be just like him. So I picked up the glockenspiel, which we called “The Bells,” and found my place in the marching band. It was a full-time extracurricular, and on game days or at holiday parades you could hear our drum line from miles away. As the sea of royal blue and white approached, 250 strong, rocking side to side, we sent tremors up and down the sidewalks and through Newark Schools Stadium.
I was into my routine and didn’t have any ambition to change it up until my sophomore year, when a trio of cool, older girls from the varsity basketball team cornered me in the locker room. They were talking about upcoming tryouts and were on a mission to recruit some new talent. They looked at me and said they’d seen me shooting hoops in gym class and that I should come check out the team.
“You’re going to try out,” the leader told me. It was not a question.
“Sure, okay.” I smiled and grabbed my things from the locker room bench.
I gave it a long think and figured I had nothing to lose, so I showed up at the gym and made the team.
Coach Carol Yvonne Clark, who eventually got me the job where I met Whitney, first saw me playing against her team. Soon after, she drove out to my house and introduced herself. “I’m the head coach of Clifford J. Scott High School in East Orange. You know, you can really play. Have you thought about college? If you come to my high school you’ll definitely have more exposure and a better shot at going to a college of your choice.” She seemed pretty convincing to me, so I made plans to transfer to Clifford Scott starting the second quarter of eleventh grade.
When I shared the good news, the first thing Raynard said was, “I’m going to lose you. Please don’t go.” I was surprised, but he was right. I don’t remember exactly how or when we began to slip away from each other, but soon after I transferred, it was over.
That year I lit it up! I scored over a thousand points my first season and led my team to win our division, though we fell short in the semifinals. My mother was working long hours and didn’t have time to come to my games. My father was abse
nt in general but spoke to me as if he knew what was going on in basketball. I assume he followed me in the Newark Star-Ledger and other New Jersey papers. He attended one of my county games, and when he met me afterward, he said, “You need to be meaner.”
After graduating, I went on to play in the famous Rucker Park league in Harlem and traveled around the country with the New Jersey Big Heads, the best basketball players representing the state. It was a great season—I was playing as well as ever, and I met my close friend Val Walker on that team.
I was recruited to play at Seton Hall University, which at the time was a Division II school. I was leaning toward attending, but that summer Montclair State was hosting a summer-league tournament and players from all over the tristate area were showcasing their talents. I was one of the top scorers in the league that year, playing next to Val, who went on to claim All-American honors in college.
I was also recruited as a package deal with Val by C. Vivian Stringer at Cheyney State, one of the winningest coaches in women’s college basketball history. In part because I had already attended a black school, I passed and chose Montclair State, which was Division I, ranked third in the nation, and had a big-time traveling schedule.
After years of playing hard and lighting up the board, I knew I was ready, but when the official season started, the coach didn’t play me. Instead, she put me in for two or three minutes per game if I was lucky. My ass was glued to the bench. As the coach frowned, folded her arms, and paced back and forth in front of the bench in frustration, I wanted to stand up and shout in her face, “You dumbass, I’m right here!”
I was beside myself. I didn’t understand, and angry tears stung my face after each game. Besides, when you sit that long, you almost forget how to play. Coach Clark and my mom came to one of my games, and they both thought the coach was racist. I don’t think she was accustomed to dealing with black girls. I was the first girl of color to make the team, and I did so as a freshman no less.
My refuge was the black sororities on campus: AKA, Phi Beta Sigma, the Deltas. They were my big sisters, always cooking something, so they fed me if I was hungry and offered their friendship. In their company I felt supported and understood, and found the camaraderie that was lacking in my team experience.
To add to the insult, at the start of my second year I was used as a tool to bring in other black players: Tracey Brown, Sharon Ross, and Bonita Spence. We all got along, but by then I wanted out.
Thankfully, the coach at Monmouth asked me to join her team, and I left Montclair after the first semester of my sophomore year. The only problem was that I couldn’t get a scholarship in the spring, so I decided I would get a job and save cash until the fall. Bonita Spence was from Atlantic City and told me casinos were opening up there and they were hiring. She said I could stay with her mother. So I headed down and was hired by Bally’s Park Place as a security guard.
I started out roving the casino in a typical gray polyester uniform, but after three weeks, I was approached by a well-dressed man who, after introducing himself, said he’d been watching me and wanted me to join the detective unit as a plainclothes investigator. I got to wear whatever I wanted—or whatever was necessary. Sometimes I could get away with nice slacks and a blouse, but if I was posted at the bar, I had to look like all the other women and dress the part. They gave me a per diem so I could easily blend in, and I would sit and chat with customers, drinking watered-down cocktails.
The detective unit was located underneath the loading dock entrance behind a solid door that housed an office equipped with a mass of video cameras. It was my job to look out for card counters, catch solicitation, and compare customer faces against a catalog thick with mug shots. Sometimes I would be dispatched to a particular casino lounge where a wanted person had been seen on a monitor. There were other times I would put on headphones, listen to conversations in a bugged hotel room, and write down everything I heard. I worked sixteen-hour shifts and slept during the day, and the long and late hours meant that I never had time to spend my generous paychecks. I liked the duties of the always-on, detail-oriented work.
Six months later, I returned to East Orange with a large stash, so I didn’t need the summer job at the Community Development center, but it never hurt to have more cash. Plus, I owed Coach Clark a lot, so when she called asking for a favor, I didn’t even blink. I was there. Little did she know her early-morning call would change my life forever.
Within a few days of meeting at the summer job, Whitney and I went out to lunch. We walked out the door and got about forty feet before she pulled out a cigarette from her breast pocket. I suppose I wore my surprise on my face.
“Yeah, I smoke,” she said, then pulled out a joint, too. Now I was shocked. She did not look like someone who got high.
“Oh, you something else, huh?” I said. Whitney laughed and put the joint back in its place.
I had smoked a bong a few times in college, but that was the extent of my experience with drugs. In high school, my English teacher sent me to the back of the class for talking. After sitting in the last row across from a kid who was dividing up bags of weed, I was set up with a small franchise. I sold marijuana in little pink bags to the cheerleaders, made $300 but quit after two weeks. Customers and money came fast and easy, but I was afraid I’d get caught—that my hardworking mother would come home and find out I’d gotten busted.
You can call me Nippy,” Whitney said. She explained that her father had given her the nickname, which came from a mischievous character in a comic strip.
I kept learning more about her. I never saw her with him, but Nip said she had a boyfriend named Craig whose mother was an original member of the Sweet Inspirations.
I wasn’t seeing anyone at the time, though I was having a problem with a girl on my basketball team who was very possessive. We’d shared a couple of kisses, but I didn’t think there was anything more to it until one of my roommates clued me in; I was blind and oblivious to what was going on around me. Anyway, Mom didn’t care much for this one, either, and was vocal about her displeasure: “Robyn, this girl is trying to weave a web around you,” she said. I remember responding, “But, Mom, if she wants to iron my uniform, I’m going to let her!”
It didn’t take me long to understand what Mom was seeing. This girl was controlling, and I needed to find a way to get her to loosen her grip sooner rather than later. I went to visit her one day that summer when she was staying in an apartment on the other side of my complex and she refused to let me leave. She kept blocking the door, so I was there for a few hours while expecting Paulette, another Big Heads teammate, and Val to come fetch me to play ball. Finally, she stepped away and I ran outside. She grabbed my arm and I swung around into a brick wall, leaving a bleeding knot on my head.
I told Whitney about the situation, and she said, “Don’t worry, I’ll get you out of that.” I didn’t ask her what she meant; we left a lot unspoken about things like that. But she did it. There was never any confrontation, and the girl simply faded away, as Whitney and I grew closer.
Other people could look at us and tell we were tight, but something more was growing between us. We became inseparable. If we weren’t at my house, then we were at hers. Her room was a wreck. Stuff was all over, clothes were piled on the floor, her bed sat perpetually unmade, and book bags, school uniforms, and purses were strewn everywhere. One time when I was in her room, we kept hearing this crunching sound. We traced it to a mouse in her bag eating Lay’s potato chips.
A few weeks after we met, Nippy invited me over. We took our time strolling through the neighborhood, and when we got tired, we went inside and sat next to each other on her living room floor, backs against the sofa. We talked and talked, and then all of a sudden, we were face-to-face.
That first kiss was long and warm like honey. As we eased out of it, our eyes locked, my nerves shot up, and my heart beat furiously. What’s gonna happen next? What
will she say? Suppose she’s upset? I just didn’t know, but clearly something was happening between us.
And then she said, “If I knew when my brothers were coming home, I’d show you something.”
It was totally badass. Nip could get you into all kinds of trouble if she had the opportunity. Just like my mom said when she met Whitney for the first time: “You look like an angel but I know you’re not.”
Two
Like an Angel
Whitney wasn’t the type of person to walk around singing all loud and showing off what she had. She wasn’t like that at all. But that first summer that I knew her, when she was in the house, in the car, or sitting on her front porch, she sang every song on Chaka Khan’s new album, front to back, especially “Clouds,” “Our Love’s in Danger,” and “Papillon (a.k.a. Hot Butterfly),” which included Luther Vandross, Whitney, and her mother, Cissy, who was a legendary background singer in her own right. Whenever those tracks came on, Whitney would sing all the background vocals, holding her Walkman headphones to her ears as if she were in the studio. In public, she was more reserved, allowing only a lyric or two to come out softly now and then.
Music was in every part of her body; she loved it, craved it, and said she was going to be a professional singer. This had been her mantra since she was twelve. She was singular in her focus, outlining all the steps she needed to follow to get where she needed to go. She worked on getting a band together and building a repertoire of songs to showcase her talents. There was something intoxicating about being with someone wholly herself. Whitney Elizabeth Houston was something else.
Whitney loved telling me about her first time in the recording studio with Chaka Khan, singing background. Chaka heard her vocals and stopped the session to tell Whitney, “Move closer to the mic.” Whitney felt she’d been anointed, so we’d be in her backyard and that girl would be going with that Walkman on:
A Song for You Page 2