Remembering Whitney: My Story of Love, Loss, and the Night the Music Stopped

by Houston, Cissy

  CHAPTER 17

  The Comeback

  Being Bobby Brown began airing in June, a couple of months after Nippy finished her treatment. I don’t know how she felt about it, or whether she even watched it, because she wasn’t really talking to me during that time. I do know that when the producers asked her about doing a second season, she said no. And they weren’t interested in continuing without her, so that was the end of that show.

  Nippy stayed mad about the intervention for a long time. All throughout the rest of 2005, she really didn’t want to have anything to do with me. We had never been estranged like this, and it just about tore me up. I hated not being able to talk to my daughter, especially since the last time I’d seen her, she was in such terrible shape. I knew she was doing better, because Gary and Pat would let me know what was going on. But it wasn’t the same as being able to talk to her, to hear my baby’s voice.

  Finally, sometime in 2006, she began talking to me a little bit. We had a phone call or two, and it seemed like she was starting to come around. I wanted her back so bad, but I didn’t push her. I knew I had to let her work it out on her own time frame. I was hoping so bad that we could get back to normal, to the place where she trusted me again and would come to me if she needed me. And in April 2006, that’s exactly what happened.

  Nippy called to tell me that the National Enquirer was about to print some photos supposedly taken in the bathroom at her house. I never did see them, because I don’t read that trash, but apparently the pictures showed a filthy sink with beer cans and cigarette butts and who knows what else strewn all over the place. Bobby’s sister Tina apparently took the photos and sold them to the tabloid. But Nippy told me she wasn’t even in Atlanta when they were supposedly taken.

  I had no idea about what the pictures showed, who took them, or who was in the house at the time. The one thing I knew—and the only thing I cared about, really—was that my daughter had reached out, and she needed me. Nippy was upset, and she was asking me to come be with her for the first time since she’d been in rehab. So I got on the first flight out of Newark that I could, and I went down to Atlanta.

  I spent the weekend at Gary and Pat’s house, and Nippy came to spend time with me there. She looked good—better and healthier than I had seen her in a long time. I ended up thinking those bathroom pictures must have been taken a while back, because Nippy really looked as if she had gotten herself together. Everything that had happened didn’t change the fact that we still didn’t talk about Bobby—instead, we talked about Tina and why she had done such a thing. And we talked about Krissi.

  By now, Krissi was thirteen, old enough to understand that all this mess was going on. I was always worried about her—not because Nippy wasn’t a good and loving mother, but because I knew it had to be hard on Krissi to be in a home situation that could sometimes be unstable. Nippy would sometimes send her to stay with Gary and Pat, when things at Tullamore weren’t going well. And I know she always looked out for Krissi as best she could. Always.

  But you know, I don’t think it’s really fair to Krissi to talk about what she did or didn’t go through during these times. Some people believed that Nippy was public property, because of her voice and her fame. But Krissi wasn’t then, and she isn’t now. She was a young girl who saw her mother go through some very tough times. All I know is, Nippy loved her daughter fiercely, and whatever Krissi went through at this time is her business to tell, if she ever chooses to do it. So I’ll leave it at that.

  I was just happy to finally spend time with my daughter, and so glad that she had reached out to me. It had been a long, terrible year, but we had made it through to the other side. All I could do was hope that the worst was finally behind us, and that the old Nippy was back for good. And that summer, my hopes were raised even higher when Nippy finally made plans to separate from Bobby.

  Nippy had a house in Los Angeles, and over the summer of 2006, she began spending a lot more time there. She’d bring Krissi out and stay for a month, and gradually she started moving some of the things she cared about from the Atlanta house to California. She did it slowly, over time, so nobody even noticed.

  Pat and Gary would come spend time in California, too, and they started talking to her about the possibility of leaving Bobby. They knew she loved him, but they didn’t talk about that. They talked about whether she and Bobby were good for each other or not, which is a very different question. And nobody looking at that situation honestly could say they were. Nippy and Bobby just pushed each other’s buttons in too many different ways. They tried hard to stay together, but both of them were struggling, and had been for a long time.

  And you know, just like with the drugs, this wasn’t all Bobby’s fault either. No matter what people said, it wasn’t like Nippy was a perfect princess and then he just came along and messed everything up. She could be mean, and she could be difficult, and she didn’t always face her problems like she should have. It’s not fair to place the blame on Bobby for everything that happened to Nippy. And because he’s the father of my granddaughter, and the man my daughter loved, I really don’t want to say anything bad about him.

  I will say this, though: I don’t think Nippy would have ended up quite so deep in it if she hadn’t been married to Bobby. I do believe her life would have turned out differently. If she’d been with someone more responsible, it would have been easier for her to get sober and stay sober. Instead she was with someone who, like her, wanted to party. To me, he never seemed to be a help to her in the way that she needed. Parents want their children to find someone supportive, but I didn’t feel that he knew how to lift her up.

  But you know, as I’ve said, you can’t choose who you fall in love with—and mothers and fathers and families surely can’t choose for you. Nippy fell in love with Bobby, so she married him and did everything she could to stay with him. And because he was the man she wanted, there wasn’t any other way it could have been.

  In September, after she’d secretly moved a lot of her things out of the Tullamore house, Nippy officially separated from Bobby. Later, she liked to say that she told him, “I’m going out for some milk and sugar. I’ll be right back”—and then she went to the airport and got on a plane. I don’t know about all that, but he apparently didn’t see it coming.

  At first, Nippy left Krissi with Gary and Pat in Atlanta, probably to make sure she was actually strong enough to stay separated from Bobby before uprooting the child. Nippy ended up renting a house in Orange County, near Los Angeles, and she was working with some kind of drug counselor there while she tried to decide whether to divorce Bobby. She was attempting to figure out her life, and that wasn’t something she could just snap her fingers and do. She needed a little time to sort things out.

  Now that she was out of Atlanta, Nippy and I talked more often on the phone. And even though we still didn’t talk directly about Bobby, I made my preference known. I’d tell her, “Let it go, child. Just let it go.” I knew she wanted to be done with that whole tumultuous period in her life, and I desperately wanted her to be able to make that happen. Oh, how I prayed for God to give her the strength to do it. If she had the courage and strength to make this step, I believed, she was finally going to be all right.

  In October 2006, Nippy filed the paperwork to divorce Bobby. The day she told me, I was thanking God so much I’m sure nobody else could get a prayer in to Him. I was extremely relieved—and I think Nippy was, too. Nobody could say she hadn’t tried her absolute hardest to keep that marriage together. But now she could finally move on, with full custody of Krissi and the rest of her life ahead of her.

  In her personal life and with her family, Nippy was back. And now Clive Davis wanted to bring her career back, too. Clive had his own label now, J Records, and he came calling to ask Nippy to record with him. He asked her if she was ready, and she told him yes—and that was all it took. She signed on to do a new album with Clive, and before long
, she went into the studio. The timing was perfect.

  I was happy to have Clive working with Nippy again. He had always looked out for her, and he still had the magic touch in the music business. She really did seem ready to get back to doing what she loved the best—singing. And now she had a whole other layer to her music and her voice. She had been through a lot, and there was a new texture and emotion to her singing. Nippy wanted to bring that to her new album, and she wanted the songs to reflect the deeper emotions of what she’d gone through, too.

  Clive had hired Diane Warren to write some songs for the new album, and one of them just felt perfect to Nippy. It was called “I Didn’t Know My Own Strength.”

  Survived my darkest hour, my faith kept me alive

  I picked myself back up, hold my head up high

  I was not built to break. . . .

  Nippy said later she couldn’t believe it when she heard the lyrics, that it was as if Diane Warren had looked into her soul and written her story. It was just a perfect song for where she was in her life—and for what she’d been through.

  And you know, that line about “my faith kept me alive” really resonated for Nippy. Because no matter what had happened with her over the years, all the drugs and the trouble and everything else, she always kept a strong and enduring faith. Though she wasn’t one to go to church too often, she believed that church was wherever you were, if you just took the time to pray. And she always did pray, even when she was at her lowest points. As she later said, there were bad times when she locked herself in her room and didn’t come out for a while, but whatever else she was doing in there, she always took her Bible with her.

  That may sound funny, and I’m sure some people won’t believe it. But I do. I was with her many times backstage before performances, and she would always gather everybody together in a circle to pray. And she wasn’t doing it for my benefit—you could tell nobody was surprised at her request, because she did it before every show from the time she first started touring. And she also listened to gospel music before performing, too, often the recordings of BeBe and CeCe Winans, Donnie McClurkin, Andraé Crouch, and of course me.

  Back when Nippy was a girl and would sing in church, I’d tell her, “Bring them to their feet, baby, and then drop them to their knees.” And Lord, she could do it. There is a strong spiritual connection between faith and music, and Nippy had it. Throughout her whole career, she always had a gospel song or two in her set list when she performed, and it was a joy to watch her face light up as she sang those songs of faith.

  All my children grew up in the church, and no matter how much they may have strayed, that connection remained with them. Michael likes to say that I introduced him to God, but Nippy really taught him about God. As a child, he used to be scared in church, because there was a lot of shouting and crying, as there tends to be in black churches. Being scared in church made him scared of God, but Nippy calmed him down by talking to him about the Lord and different characters in the Bible. She told Michael he reminded her of David, because he was a fighter. And that gave Michael strength.

  Nippy knew God, and although she was private about it, there were some moments when she showed it. One afternoon before a performance, our friend the pastor Joe Watkins was backstage. Nippy invited him to pray with everyone, and as he was praying, she just started to cry. She said, “All right, Joe, thank you,” and excused herself to go into her dressing room. She was late going out onstage that day, because she had to do her eye makeup over. But the Lord had touched her that day, as He did many times. Whatever else happened, I can still take comfort in that.

  In July 2009, just as she was starting to promote her new album, I Look to You, Nippy agreed to sit down with Oprah Winfrey to do a long interview. At Oprah’s request, she also agreed to sing Diane Warren’s “I Didn’t Know My Own Strength.” Everything would be filmed and then made into a two-hour special that was scheduled to air in the fall.

  Clive had scheduled a “listening party” for July 21 in New York, and I went into the city for it, too. It was held in the Allen Room at Lincoln Center, and the feeling in that place was like a revival. This was Nippy’s first album in seven years, and you could just feel the love and appreciation for her from everyone in that room. I think people were relieved and happy that Nippy had gotten to this place—a place where she could use the gift of her voice and get back to doing the thing she did best.

  Clive played nine songs from the record, and Alicia Keys danced around when the song she wrote, “Million Dollar Bill,” played. Nippy was almost forty-six now, and both her voice and demeanor had matured—but she got up and danced around, too, because the vibe in that room was so good. Clive invited Nippy to get up and say a few words, and Nippy stood in front of the room and told everyone how grateful she was that he had called her and brought her back to singing. Then she and Clive clasped hands like the old friends they were.

  And Nippy said something that made everybody laugh, though it had a tinge of sadness to it, too. She said that before Clive called, she was thinking about just taking Krissi and going off to an island somewhere, to live in a hut and run a fruit stand. People laughed, but I’m not sure Nippy was kidding. Just as when Krissi was born, I think Nippy might have liked to walk away from the craziness of the music business. She knew what was ahead now, the long months of touring and interviews, and she knew it would be a hard road. All I could do was hope she was strong enough to withstand the temptations she’d surely find along that road.

  The day after the listening party, Nippy flew to Chicago to sit down with Oprah. I think she already knew this wasn’t going to be just another interview. I could sense that she was ready to lay it all out there. But what I didn’t realize was how much the things Nippy revealed would surprise and shock even me.

  The interview aired over two nights in September, on Monday the thirteenth and Tuesday the fourteenth. I watched them at home, by myself, and there were times I just couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Nippy had always tried to keep me from finding out the worst of what was happening in her life, so when she opened up about everything with Oprah, the details were as new to me as they were to strangers watching in their living rooms.

  Nippy described a lot of upsetting things, but I think the worst was listening to her talk about the night Bobby spit on her. I had never heard of any such thing, and I’m sure Bobby knew what I—or Gary, or Michael—would have done if we’d found out about it while they were still married. Hearing my baby describe the way Bobby had treated her on this occasion was so infuriating, I wanted to jump through the television:

  I just remember this moment. It was his birthday, and I gave him a party at a club in Atlanta, Buckhead. He drank a lot that night. He drank a lot. And for some reason, everything that I did, I tried to do to make him happy—it would turn on me. . . .

  So when we got back to the house—he’s going to hate that I say this—but he spit on me. And my daughter was coming down the stairs, and she saw it. That was pretty intense. Because I didn’t grow up with that, and I didn’t understand why that occurred. But he had such a hate in his eyes for me.

  No, she certainly did not grow up with that, because even when John and I were upset with each other, we treated each other with respect. And it never, ever got physical—not even close. So I can imagine this kind of behavior was a shock for her. And of course she was upset that it happened right in front of Krissi—what kind of example did that set for her daughter? But as I sat there watching in disbelief, it got even worse:

  I was very hurt. Very angry. And I knew somebody, somewhere, something was going to blow. I called a friend. I said, “Come get me now because it’s at a turning point now,” and I was almost two feet out the door at that point in time. I was ready to go. . . .

  And I asked [my friend] to come get me, and [Bobby] pushed me against the wall. . . . I was on the phone and I went back in and I took the phone and I hit
him over the head with it. He just fell out on the floor. It was just drama. . . .

  My daughter came down the stairs. She’s, like, “Daddy? . . . Mom, what did you—,” [her daughter asked]. I said, “I told him not to do it.” I kept saying, “I told him not to do this. I told him not to do this.” It was just one of those moments. It was just hateful. Ugly.

  Ever since she was a little girl, Nippy would rather do almost anything but fight. But my daughter was no coward—if you pushed her too far, you’d better look out. Because she would come at you. I hated the thought that this kind of thing had happened at all, but I was glad at least that Nippy had stood up for herself when it seemed like things might get out of control.

  It was so strange, watching my daughter talk with somebody on television about things like this. The interviews were very hard to watch because of terrible, upsetting moments like the spitting incident. And yet, when they were finished, the overwhelming feeling I had was one of relief. Nippy looked good, and she was really being honest about her problems and the trials she’d been through. I guess she finally wanted people to know the truth, and I could only hope that would help her get through the months to come.

  In some ways, Nippy seemed to have found peace. Back in 2002, with Diane Sawyer, she had denied the extent of her drug problem. But now, seven years later, she accepted it and talked about it openly. She was trying to maintain a strong relationship with her daughter, and she was back with Clive Davis, singing again. It seemed like Nippy was doing everything she knew how to do to get her life back together.

  But you know, there was also a sadness in my daughter’s eyes. I saw it during the Oprah interview, and I also heard it when we would talk on the phone. I always could tell when Nippy was sad, even if she was trying to put on a happy face for the world. I wanted so badly to help her not feel so sad, but I didn’t know how. So I just told her I loved her. And I hoped and prayed that the worst was truly behind us all.