Every Little Step: My Story (13 page)

I had to sit on her legs and hold her hands while they stitched her up. She was looking up at me and crying. It was just terrible, really terrible. I felt extremely bad. Her brother was with us and he let me know, “Man, it was an accident. Don’t beat yourself up about it.”

“But that’s her face!” I said. “That’s how she makes her money.”

After they put in the stitches, her face swelled up so much that it was scary. I was worried that she was going to have a scar. And she did have a little scar when everything healed. When we got back to the US, it became clear that when they stitched her in Italy they didn’t do it correctly. They didn’t stitch the muscle first; they stitched it all together. So she had to have reconstructive surgery so that it could be corrected. We went to a cut doctor in Miami who used to do work for Muhammad Ali. He fixed it perfectly; you had to look really closely to see any kind of blemish on her face after he was done.

After our honeymoon, I had an intense argument with Robyn Crawford, who was Whitney’s assistant and had been her best friend since they were teenagers together in New Jersey. Over the years there were numerous stories about their being lesbian lovers, which Whitney always denied in public. I think their relationship
had
become sexual at some point, but once I arrived on the scene, changes had to be made. They
couldn’t be as close as they were before because Whitney now had me in her life, her husband. But Robyn wasn’t accepting this new development gracefully; she was not happy about being pushed away.

One particular night, she had gotten so disrespectful and dismissive of our marriage that I couldn’t take it anymore.

“You gotta get the fuck out,” I said to her. “You gotta go. I can’t take this no fuckin’ more! This is my wife. You have to go.”

Robyn looked over at Whitney with this incredulous look on her face.

“Are you going to take this shit?!” she asked Whitney. “Let him talk to me like that?”

“Yeah,” Whitney said softly.

Robyn stormed out, and a permanent breach formed in their relationship. But I would like to say that I never thought Robyn was a bad person. Robyn was the perfect person in Whitney’s life for the time she was in Whitney’s life, because that’s when Whitney was her happiest. I wished and prayed Whitney could be happy with me, and she was for a time, but it wasn’t the same as when she was with Robyn. I needed for Robyn to understand that I was now Whitney’s husband, so their relationship had to change, but I didn’t want Robyn gone entirely.

Robyn had never been accepted by Whitney’s family. Her mother didn’t accept Robyn; her father didn’t accept her. But Robyn was the best friend Whitney ever had; she was her con
fidante. Whitney needed her. Robyn was the one who listened to her, who heard her, who was always there for her. I tried to be those things too, but it didn’t last. I think if Robyn could have been accepted in Whitney’s life and remained close to her, Whitney would still be alive today.

Something in Common

Soon after our wedding, I traveled down to Virginia Beach to work on some tracks with Teddy Riley for my next album, the follow-up to
Don’t Be Cruel
, which would be called, simply,
Bobby
. Whitney didn’t want me to be in Virginia Beach by myself—though I’m not sure why. It was early in the marriage, so I guess she still didn’t completely trust me. So she came with me.

One day when I was in the studio with Teddy, laughing and joking around, Teddy thought it was funny that Whitney and I kept going outside to smoke a cigarette. It was a beautiful day and we loved getting outside, joking and cutting up. One particular time when we came back inside, Teddy said, “You two have too much in common.”

When he said that, we all looked at each other. We knew we had something. Bernard Belle was there with us. So we started trying to figure it out. We all wrote the song “Something in Common” together—Teddy, Whitney, me, Bernard, plus two other guys, Mark Middleton and Alfred Rosemond. It was such a great time for us.

We did it all in one day. We finished writing the lyrics and started laying down the track together. That meant I had to sing opposite one of the greatest voices of all time. Was I intimidated? Hell yeah. I’ve never thought of myself as a singer’s singer. I can hold a tune. I’m a singer. She’s a
sanger
. I could sing. She could
sang
. But I learned a lot from her, just by watching her work and also by her offering suggestions. She taught me how to use my voice, how to bend my notes, how to chop my voice when I needed. She was a great teacher. First of all, just to be around her when she was singing, to watch how effortlessly she did it, made you want to be better as a singer. That’s what she did for me. And if she saw me straining to do something, she would give me a different way to do it, another way of approaching the note that would be easier.

While she taught me how to sing, I taught her how to dance. At first, she was uncomfortable with dancing. Admittedly she didn’t have much rhythm. But she had a certain flair. If we were dancing together, she could hold her own. And we did love dancing together. I even sent my girl dancers on tour with her. I had them working with her and she progressively got better and better. With the two of us working together, sharing our strengths, I think we made each other better entertainers.

When you watch the video for “Something in Common,” you can see all of Whitney’s cute little signature moves. She’s not bouncing around as much as I am in the video, but she’s
looking smooth and sexy as she dances in her own inimitable way. You can also see glimpses of our playfulness in the video. In one scene when I walk up behind her, she lunges back at me like she’s going to backhand me in the face. That illustrated the constant play-wrestling and play-fighting we did in our relationship.

A month after our wedding, my third studio album,
Bobby,
was released by MCA. While the album didn’t do the crazy numbers of
Don’t Be Cruel,
it still did very well. It sold over two million units and reached number one on the
Billboard
R & B album chart and number two on the overall
Billboard
200 chart. The singles “Humpin’ Around” and “Good Enough” both made it into the top ten of the
Billboard
Hot 100 singles list. In addition, “Humpin’ Around” was nominated for a Grammy for Best R & B Male Vocal Performance but lost to Al Jarreau’s “Heaven and Earth.” That was the category I had won three years earlier with “Every Little Step.” We were happy, and our careers were still riding high.

Whitney and I spent a lot of time watching television, cracking on people. That was one of our favorite pastimes. Well, that and sex. We did a whole lot of lovemaking. Nearly every day—and often more than once a day. Throughout the first decade or so of our marriage, before things started turning sour, we were always hot for each other. If we weren’t in a place where we could make it happen, sometimes we’d sneak off and fuck in a closet somewhere. We just turned each other on like that. Nip was an incredibly sexual, sensual being. For
me she was just like a sexual magnet. Whenever I saw her, I just wanted to touch her. I’m also a very sexual person, so we were an explosive combination. When you watch footage of us together back then and you see us hanging all over each other, that was real. We probably had just finished fucking or were about to slip away and get busy.

Not long after our wedding, we got some joyful news in the New Jersey mansion: Whitney was pregnant. In fact, she had been about a month or so pregnant on our wedding day. It was exciting news for me; I love kids so much that I was giddy about adding another one to my brood.

Whitney’s pregnancy went smoothly, for the most part. She got real big real fast. It seemed like one second she was this svelte goddess and when I turned my head she ballooned into all belly. She craved hot dogs and pork and beans—not exactly the meal of multimillionaires. She also craved sandwiches from Blimpie, the subs she grew up eating in Jersey. I remember times when I was on tour when I’d have to leave the hotel in the middle of the night to find a Blimpie for my wife.

The day the baby came was joyous; it seemed like every member of her family was waiting in the hospital in the New Jersey suburbs for our new baby to emerge.

After Bobbi Kristina joined our household, there was nothing but love flowing through our family. We were so happy to have this little bundle of energy around us all the time. Whitney refused to go anywhere without her baby in her arms. It was so pleasing to see her as a mother, watching
her give so much of herself to this little person. After Bobbi Kristina started walking, the three of us would spend hours at a time playing her favorite game, hide-and-go-seek. She would squeeze her little body into all kinds of hidden corners in that huge house. But as soon as we started looking for her, loudly announcing that we were coming to get her, Krissi couldn’t keep quiet and would start squealing in delight. What a beautiful sound that was.

I have such vivid memories of the three of us playing in bed together, romping around or just lying there with the TV on. We were so proud of our little girl. Whitney always claimed that Bobbi Kris looked just like her. I wouldn’t say anything; I’d let her have that because I knew the truth. As soon as she opened her mouth and smiled, you knew exactly who her daddy was.

“That’s the only thing you got! That damn gap!” Whitney would say.

Even before Bobbi Kris was born we always had a lot of staff in that New Jersey house. Whitney’s aunt Bae, who wasn’t really her aunt but who had grown up with Whitney’s dad and had helped raise Whitney, came to live with us and help run the household. After the baby came, caring for her became one of Aunt Bae’s primary responsibilities, assisted by her two grown daughters. I didn’t have any of my family around me in the beginning. I felt like I needed to get away from my family at that point because all I did was spend money on them, take care of them. That had always been ex
tremely important to me, so I’m not complaining. But I did need a break. When Bobbi Kris was a little older, eventually my sister Leolah came to stay with us to act as Whitney’s assistant and help care for Bobbi Kris.

As a family, the three of us cooked together, we swam in the pool together. At a moment’s notice we would decide to take a trip. We liked the Bahamas, so I’d call our money managers and tell them, “I need thirty thousand dollars and a plane.”

Then Whitney’s family would want to come with us—her brothers, Gary and Michael, and their wives and kids, Raya, Gary and Blair. Next thing I knew our spur-of-the-moment trip had turned into a major undertaking. But it did limit the amount of time the three of us—me, Whitney and Krissi—had to spend together as a family.

Our fame got especially hard for Krissi when she started school. We would make efforts to hide her identity from the other students, like registering her at the school under a different name. But then Whitney or I would drop her off or someone else would drive her and pull up in a Bentley, so it wouldn’t take long for her cover to be blown. One of the only black children in the school and she’s getting dropped off alternately by Whitney Houston and Bobby Brown? Hmmm—wonder who that little girl could be?

That’s the cross Bobbi Kris had to bear from a young age. My other kids didn’t really have to go through that because I spent so much time away from them.

A FEW WORDS FROM LANDON BROWN

People have been approaching me since I was a little boy, for as long as I can remember, telling me how great my father is. Teachers would be starstruck and give me special treatment. It was all very weird to me. At one point I went to school with Darryl Strawberry’s son and he explained it to me: “Well, my dad is really good at baseball.”

So in my mind I thought,
Oh, if your dad is really good at something then other people admire him for it. My dad is really good at performing!

When I was in seventh grade I went to live with my dad and Whitney in New Jersey. At the time I called her “Mom.” I figured it was okay since my mom made me call my stepdad, Carl Payne, “Dad.” When I got to the house, even before I had a chance to call her “Mom,” she said to me, “I’m your mom too, so call me ‘Mom.’”

This was 1998, six years into their marriage. Bobbi Kristina was five at the time, so I was excited to spend time with my little sister. In the time I lived there, I got an interesting view of their relationship from up close. Everybody makes a big deal out of their arguments and bad times—like no one has bad times and arguments—but if you were in the room with Whitney and my dad and my dad left the room, you would still think he was in the room because she was like the exact same person as him. It was weird. They both had this awkward laugh, and they were both completely honest with the
things they thought. Neither one of them had a filter. They agreed on so many things and were so much alike that when they did disagree on something, it was bound to become a big deal. My dad would go from frustrated to happy, then right back to frustrated.

A few months after I got there, my dad had to spend time in jail because of a drunk-driving conviction from a few years earlier. He was upset a lot and you could tell that he was having a hard time. When he was in prison, I got a chance to talk to him on the phone.