A Song for You

by Robyn Crawford

  I spent some time on that ride thinking about how far Marty had come since we were kids. He had always been an inspiration to me. He was the eldest of the three Crawford kids and the man of the house. Growing up I was never hassled about my preference for athletic wear and running with the boys, but people sometimes asked me, “What’s up with your brother?” He had no interest in athletics even though he could outrun everyone in a game of Catch One Catch All while wearing a maxi coat.

  “He’s just into music,” I would answer.

  “You’re tougher than him,” was a common observation.

  Marty was an artist and performer. He would hook up my sister, dressing her in elaborate ensembles, like one of his shirts fashioned as a dress, belted around the waist with a necktie and finished off with coordinating tights. He’d alter my best practice shorts to fit him tighter, then wear them out dancing. Girls loved him because he was cute, was a gentleman, and could Hustle, but he never dated anyone.

  Mom adored and cherished him, and so did all her friends, but this turned out to be a double-edged sword. When Marty clearly demonstrated he wasn’t like most other boys, the blame fell on her: What did she do wrong—was it dressing him in corduroys instead of jeans? My dad in particular came up with all kinds of explanations, whether it was “being around women too much” or being coddled by Mom.

  Dad’s attempt at correctional therapy was yelling at the top of his lungs in Marty’s face, “Who’s the boss—me or your mother?” Marty would meekly respond, “You are, Daddy,” and as soon as he said it, Dad would punch him in the chest and call him a punk. My dad was keenly attuned to homosexuality because his older brother was gay. The few times we visited Uncle Dickey’s house, my father was happy to take a plate of his home cooking and seemed to love his older brother. But my father was incapable of extending the same tolerance and understanding to a son who didn’t reflect him.

  Though I was like him, my father never called me a tomboy. My mother always said I was a Crawford. I inherited my father’s looks, athleticism, and competitive nature, while soft-spoken and artistic Marty and quiet and brainy Bina took after my mother’s side.

  Once Mom got us away from my father, Marty began to thrive. He was handsome, with big, beautiful, sad eyes, and all the ladies liked him. He was awarded a music scholarship to Florida A&M University for his accomplishments in the orchestra and marching band. But not long after Marty went away to school, he got sick: He and a few other students contracted hepatitis B. Marty told us it was from dirty dishes. Soon after that, he left college and came home complaining about the harsh treatment of band initiates. “They beat you with a stick,” he said. Marty didn’t talk much about his short college experience, at least not to me, but I knew it was painful for him.

  When we arrived at the hospital, we hurried into the emergency room waiting area. Whitney was steady and held my hand. “Whatever happens, I’ll stay with you,” she said.

  I found Mom sitting in the waiting room, relieved to see us. She guided us through the corridors toward his room, saying Marty had significant internal and external injuries and was in a coma. He had initially been rushed to a hospital that didn’t have a neurology unit, so he was then medevacked to Pitt County Memorial Hospital, where they found no evidence of brain damage.

  I gathered up my courage and entered his room. It was hard to see my brother lying there like that. His lungs had collapsed, and he was all bruised and swollen, with a broken arm, jaw, and ribs; tubes going into both sides of his torso; and dried, bloody patches smeared on his face and body. They had to reconstruct his nose. Despite all of that, Marty looked as if he was radiating life—his skin had an orange glow! At that moment I just knew he would be okay. And I said so. My mother called my father and suggested he come to North Carolina to check on his son. He showed up for one day. Mom put us up in a hotel, and after a few days she and Bina went home while Whitney and I stayed behind for a week, went home, and then returned again.

  By then Marty had been moved to a naval hospital in Portsmouth, Virginia. It had been about three weeks and he still remained in a coma. After a few days, I called home and told my mother Marty would awaken the next day, a Wednesday, and he did. We asked him if he wanted anything and he said, “A cheeseburger and a strawberry shake.” His jaw was wired shut, but he had a little opening, large enough to fit a straw, so I said, “I don’t think you can eat the cheeseburger, but we’ll get you a shake.”

  His motor skills needed work and he could barely walk. He got a little stronger, and one day Whitney wheeled Marty outside the hospital where there was a pretty nice view of the water, and we gave him a toke on a joint.

  Six weeks after the accident, Marty was recuperating in my mother’s living room. He wrote in a journal a lot and was frustrated and angry, but I didn’t know all that was behind it. My mother called my father again to tell him Marty was home and discharged from the air force, but also to ask for help because her credit card bills were high from the hotel and travel. Dennis Crawford didn’t come up with a dime. “Even in an emergency he isn’t good for anything,” Mom muttered, and went down the hall to her room.

  When she was out of sight, Marty blurted, “Robyn’s only good in a crisis.” Stunned, I stopped what I was doing and waited for him to explain what he meant. When he didn’t, I broke the silence with a concern of my own.

  “Do you think Whitney and I will still be together when she makes it big?” I asked.

  “She’ll probably get tired of your ass,” he snapped. He’d seen Whitney and me kiss once, but we never talked about it. Whitney’s multiple trips with me to North Carolina and our living together made it clear she and I were close. His words baffled me and stung, but also sounded a little jealous and mean. I had never seen Marty with even one person who seemed to care for him the way Whitney did for me.

  Once he recovered, Marty returned to Seymour Johnson, where because of the injuries he sustained, he could no longer be a bomb loader. Instead he was put in charge of “the tool shed.” This new position gave him a view of his crew on the flight line, where he used to be. Marty was precise about the tool line, instructing personnel to thoroughly clean all instruments before returning them to their proper slots.

  Nippy and I decided to pay him a surprise visit for his twenty-sixth birthday so we could celebrate with him.

  Surprises always made Marty smile, and boy did he deserve a good one after all he’d been through. At first he didn’t believe us when we called and told him we were there, but after we described a landmark or two, he giggled and called the front gate. He always took an interest in whatever we were up to and found Whitney and me pretty funny, nicknaming us “Nippy and Nappy!”

  We had a fun visit, meeting some of his fellow airmen and friends. Over the weekend, Nippy developed an attachment to a stray Angora kitten that Marty had taken in. The cat, only a few weeks old, was named Misty. He had been feeding her milk through a tiny plastic bottle with a nipple, and Nip stayed up at night and through the next day holding and feeding her. When it was time to leave, she asked Marty if she could take Misty with us. Of course he said yes.

  We decided to return the rental car in North Carolina and fly home. Since I was still working for Piedmont Airlines, I was able to get a jump seat, so we had only to cover the cost of Whitney’s ticket. Nippy hid Misty inside her bag and cradled her like a babe. Midflight we discovered that Misty was loaded with fleas, so Nip wrapped her tightly in a complimentary airplane blanket and then left the blanket behind for the cleaning crew. (I know—terrible!)

  When we were home and settled, we had to figure out how to get the fleas off Misty, as they were quickly spreading all over our apartment. (Payback from the plane!) We had wall-to-wall carpeting and could see little black spots here and there on the light gray weave. I’d sit on the sofa and spot them on my white socks, feel them biting my ankles, shoulders, and neck. Nip would sit on the floor with Misty on he
r lap, picking the fleas off one by one and killing them between her thumb and pointer fingernail.

  Nippy loved that cat, and I did, too, but after a week, I’d had all I could take of the fleas. One day, as Nip was sitting with Misty, doing her flea fetching and plucking, I felt one of them bite me on my arm and spotted several crawling up my shirt. I shouted, “I can’t take it anymore! We have to do something about this now. This is too much! Either this cat has to go or I have to!” Very calmly, she looked up at me and said, “Pack your shit.” She loved her some Misty. We finally took her to the vet, where we found out that she was, in fact, a he, and we renamed him MisteBlu.

  Not long after the Merv Griffin broadcast, Clive called saying Jermaine Jackson wanted to record with Whitney. Apparently, Clive had shown him a video of Whitney’s performance, and Jermaine said that he “had to work with her.” Nippy was excited about collaborating with a Jackson. My understanding was that Dick Rudolph (Minnie Riperton’s husband and collaborator until her death in 1979) was originally tapped as a producer for Whitney’s first album, but that deal failed to materialize, so Jermaine ended up filling the producer role. When Whitney shared the news, it didn’t make much sense to me, because Jermaine Jackson hadn’t done anything on the producing side with anyone remotely as promising as Whitney Houston, but what did I know? He was a Jackson; she was the new singer on the block. Arista thought they would jump-start her career by pairing her with an established artist. So they flew her to Los Angeles and scheduled her to record a few duets.

  She was gone for a week and a half, which felt really long. I was alone except for MisteBlu, who sat with me on the couch at night while I waited for the phone to ring. I could tell right away that more than just recording was going down. Whenever Nip and I spoke, she wasn’t at all focused on herself or her career—every call was “Ji” this and “Ji” that. She barely asked me anything about things at home, and when she did, it was brief, and then we’d move back to more Ji talk. She called a few times from the studio to play me what they’d recorded, but all I could focus on was the two of them laughing and whispering in the background.

  I didn’t feel like I should call her, even though I had the phone numbers for the studio and her hotel. I didn’t want to wake her too early or interrupt anything. There were a few times I did phone around the time that I thought she would be getting ready for the day. She’d answer and quickly say that she was about to go to the studio and would phone when she got there. Of course, that would turn out to be hours later.

  Whitney had said that she would always be there for me and needed me to be there for her, and I believed she meant it—that we both felt that. Now I felt her slipping away.

  I lay on the floor of our living room in the dark, letting the tears flow down my cheeks. I was alone.

  After she returned, Whitney said that in her opinion Jermaine had a better sound to his voice than his brother Michael. She had three songs for me to hear: “Nobody Loves Me Like You Do,” “If You Say My Eyes Are Beautiful,” and “Don’t Look Any Further.” They were cool, though Jermaine’s voice was no match for Nippy’s, especially on my favorite: “Don’t Look Any Further.” Whitney’s vocal was out front, as if she were a jet burning up the runway and Jermaine was left behind at the gate. “Girl, you’re gonna blow out your vocal cords if you keep singing like that,” Jermaine told her. He decided not to include that duet on his album and “Don’t Look Any Further” was snatched up, recorded, and released featuring Siedah Garrett and Dennis Edwards of the Temptations.

  A week or two after her trip to Los Angeles, Nip and I drove over to Arista to have a meeting with the department heads and staff. We went down the agenda of artist-related stuff, and when Jermaine’s name came up, an executive at the label pulled me aside and told me that Jermaine didn’t want Whitney riding on his coattails. Ain’t he dreaming, I thought. The long-anticipated 1984 Jackson Victory Tour had recently been announced, and I guess Jermaine was really feeling his Jackson power around this time.

  Back at home, even with this new emotional distance, Nip and I still talked into the wee hours, and I’d sometimes fall asleep right next to her in her bed. She never slept in my room, though, and if the middle of the night found her there, Whitney would rouse herself long enough to stumble back to her own. I was wounded by her new relationship and disappointed that she wasn’t talking to me. I mean, this was a Jackson! That was huge! Didn’t we tell each other everything? I thought being truthful with each other was paramount. I could live without being romantically involved, but I had trouble facing the walls that were going up.

  After a show at Sweetwater’s, Whitney changed into street clothes and was putting on her shoes when an acquaintance of Cissy’s came into her dressing room. While he was talking, Nip shot me a look that let me know she wanted to cut the conversation short and get out of there.

  “Oh, you two can communicate without talking?” he asked. Whitney and I looked at each other, guilty as charged.

  “That’s good,” he said. “Girls, y’all gonna be fine. You just have to be careful with the three M’s: men, marriage, and marijuana.” Whitney and I burst out laughing and thanked the man for his advice.

  It seemed funny at the time, but now the first M was becoming a real problem. As long as we remained loyal, I didn’t have an issue with it. But when she chose not to talk to me about her relationship with Jermaine and left me to wonder and figure it out on my own, I began to feel like ours was not a true friendship at all. It also concerned me that I couldn’t get her to leave the house to go anywhere but the club because she preferred sitting in her room waiting for the phone to ring. It was as if she’d forgotten all about herself, the music, and me. I tried to imagine myself in her shoes, but I couldn’t. She had said we were supposed to be a team, but that’s not how it felt.

  I knew I was having a hard time, but apparently, I wasn’t aware of quite how hard. One afternoon while Whitney was driving us somewhere on the highway, I asked her a question and was met with total silence. Suddenly, without thinking, I raised my right arm and swung it toward her head, making contact. Whitney lifted her elbow to shield herself, but my arm still hit her shoulder, causing the car to swerve a little. You’ve lost it, I said to myself. Then aloud, I said, “I’m sorry. Pull over and I’ll walk home.” Whitney asked me if I was sure before she made a U-turn toward a shoulder near a gas station. She was hesitant to drive away, but I motioned for her to go. Don’t get me wrong here! Whitney didn’t appreciate that shit at all and her face said so. I felt horrible and shaken about losing control and needed some time alone.

  What I had done wasn’t only wrong, it was dangerous. We were on a three-lane road and Whitney had been driving in the middle, but luckily no one was next to us. We were three-quarters of a mile from our place, which gave me thirty minutes or so to think as I walked. I had never lost my cool like that before. Even on the basketball court, I never pounced on someone for pulling a dirty move.

  By the time I reached home, I knew it was time to explain myself, to lay bare the agony of what I had been feeling while she was in LA and to point out how distant and preoccupied she’d been since she returned home.

  When I entered Whitney’s room, I plopped down beside her on the bed and apologized again. I was honest in saying that I could sense they were sleeping together and was determined to get through it in spite of the pain. Then I came straight out and asked her to talk to me about where her head was and about what had happened in Los Angeles. She began calmly recounting her first meeting with Jermaine. He told her he was obsessed with her beauty and spellbound by her voice. With the help of his buddy Marcus, the two of them sneaked away to a hotel on three occasions.

  When she finished, I couldn’t say a word; my emotions were bouncing off the walls. She wasn’t telling me anything I hadn’t already suspected, but the fact that she chose not to tell me and then forced me to drag it out of her? That burned. Up until that poin
t, Whitney had included me in all her plans and dreams. But now she was not the same person. Her enthusiasm for her career had been displaced by this new fixation on “Ji.”

  I got up, went into my room, and began throwing things against the walls and turning over furniture: my bed, my dresser, anything I could get my hands on. I didn’t stop until I got too exhausted to go on. The room was a total disaster, and when I looked up, Whitney was standing in my doorway. Our eyes locked and she said quietly, “Now clean it up.” I took a nap, and then I put it all back together.

  It made sense that at some point we were going to be with other people, but this thing with Jermaine hurt like hell. I had to find a way to move on emotionally, too, and that was that. Before I went to sleep, I made a pledge to myself to find love and adventures of my own.

  The next week I fielded calls from Jermaine, who always spoke in that low and soft Jackson voice.

  “Speak to Whitney?” he’d say.

  “Hi, Jermaine,” I’d respond. “Hold on.”

  His “Speak to Whitney” was more cordial than Cissy’s “Speak to my daughter,” but both greetings left me cold. When she and “Ji” spoke, I could hear the hum of Nippy’s voice moving up and down in confidential tones that had once been reserved only for me. But I didn’t hang around listening to her conversations. That would have been pretty pathetic, so I gave Nippy her privacy.

  By now, Whitney had filled me in on more of the backstory: According to Jermaine, he was unhappy in his marriage with Hazel Gordy, was planning to get a divorce, and would soon be single. I said, “Nippy, is that what he’s telling you?” I was good and mad. Here this Jackson bro was using Whitney’s talent to boost his career while simultaneously messing with her head and cheating on his wife. I tried to tell Whitney how distracted she had become, all because this guy couldn’t sing that well, produce that great, or keep his penis in his pants. I thought she needed to understand the situation and the effect it was having on her (and on me). But Whitney was smitten and there was no talking to her.