Every Little Step: My Story (23 page)

A FEW WORDS FROM L
A
PRINCIA BROWN

There was this guy named Warren who was supposed to be helping Krissi the day her mother died, but he kept telling her, “If you don’t want to see your dad, you don’t have to.” I was so upset when I heard that. Who are you to know what she needs right now, to tell her she doesn’t have to see her father? That seemed to me to be the opposite of what somebody should really say in that situation. But I thought they were building a suspicion of our father in Krissi’s mind. I felt like it was really controlling. When I heard her saying, “I don’t want to see my dad,” I didn’t take it as her being mad at Dad, I took it as her saying it was going to hurt to see him. She didn’t want to have to deal with the hurt.

I think if I were to tell my boyfriend or my best friend after my mother had passed away that I didn’t want to see my dad, they’d be like, “Okay,” but still make sure my dad got to me. They would tell me that I needed to see my father, not take it upon themselves to make the decision for me.

When we were waiting for my dad the morning after her mom died, Krissi was supposed to be taking a shower. I asked my cousin Mimi, “Where’s Krissi?” But she sat there ignoring me, looking off into space. At this point my dad pulled up and I started freaking out. There was a door connected to the outside in her room and someone had taken her away. I started crying hysterically because I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t believe they had taken her away.

It was so crazy that Krissi had just had an incident in the bathtub before her mom died. They said she had fallen asleep in the tub and somebody had to pull her up. I never got a chance to ask Krissi about this. She kept changing her phone number and I could never get through to her. The few times I did talk to her, I could tell she wasn’t really talking to me. It was like she was just telling me whatever I wanted to hear. I think Nick convinced her we couldn’t be trusted—her siblings, her father—that we were terrible people. But he didn’t even know us. My dad didn’t even know who he was.

I think there’s this idea out there that my dad is a bad father, and that somehow what happened to Krissi is partly his fault. But once your child turns eighteen and you have no say over what they’re doing, you can’t
make
them see you, you can’t
make
them tell you where they are. You can’t call the police because they won’t talk to you. There’s only so much you can do. When you have everyone else covering for you, when you can change your number every two seconds, when you have all this power to make somebody leave you alone,
then what are your parents supposed to do? I want to know. What do all these other parents do when their kids run away and never talk to them again?

Reaching Krissi

After Whitney died, Alicia and I stayed in a hotel in Huntington Beach for four days, dodging paparazzi, trying to connect with Krissi. The Houstons and Whitney’s team kept blaming it on Krissi, telling me she didn’t want to see me. But I wasn’t buying that—suddenly we’re acting like Krissi is making wise choices? They knew damn well she needed to be with her father. My other kids were on the verge of breakdowns because they couldn’t reach her either. I was drifting between fear and outrage, worrying about my daughter’s emotional and mental state while being exceedingly upset about what I saw as a concerted effort to keep my child away from her dad in this time of extreme need. Who did these people think they were, to keep a daughter from her father? And from the things Tommy was telling me about the inattention he witnessed the night Whitney died, it’s not like I could believe she was in the best of hands with them.

I often worried about the kind of care Krissi was getting in her mother’s household after I left, based on the things I saw with my own eyes and the things I was hearing from other people, such as my daughter LaPrincia. But at least I
knew her mother loved her and wanted the best for her, even if she was sometimes in too altered a state to know how to provide that for her. But I had no assurances that the rest of the Houston family was putting the care of Krissi at the top of their priority list. I mean, on the day her mother died, my brother saw her dealing with her grief alone in the midst of a roomful of clowns like Ray J partying and popping bottles.

Their lack of concern for my child was confirmed when I heard about a reality show they were producing called
The Houstons: On Our Own
. Not long after Whitney was put in the ground, Pat Houston started making plans to parade Krissi’s grief on-screen for the whole world to see in a reality show. How do you do that to a baby who just lost her mother? Are you kidding me? Nobody ever came to me to ask my opinion about whether this was a good idea—because they knew I would have said, “Hell no!” I was incredulous when I heard. And might I point out that Krissi wasn’t a Houston, she was a Brown. (Ironically, Pat Houston wasn’t really a Houston either. Her husband, Gary’s, last name was actually Garland, not Houston, because he and Whitney had different fathers. Gary’s father was Freddie Garland, to whom Cissy was married in the mid-1950s. When Gary played in the NBA, his name was Gary Garland. That was still his name when he married Pat. They were Gary and Pat Garland. But somewhere along the way they became Gary and Pat Houston.)

With Krissi, I saw the family repeating some of the same patterns that I had seen with Whitney: making her feel in
adequate as a means of controlling her. That’s exactly what they did to my ex-wife. They couldn’t let Whitney live the life she wanted to live; they insisted that she be perfect, that she be someone she wasn’t. That’s why they wanted Robyn out of Whitney’s life. That’s why they never thought I was good enough for her. People want to attack me for my involvement with Whitney, but at least I gave her the space to be herself. Hell, if it would have made things better for Whitney, we could have been just friends and she could have kept Robyn in her life. In retrospect, I could have lived with that. But the people around her, like Clive Davis and her family, wouldn’t let that happen. And now they were orchestrating Krissi’s separation from her dad and, at the same time, broadcasting Krissi’s pain on a television reality show? I felt like it was a nasty, unconscionable form of child abuse.

My brother, Tommy, actually agreed to appear on the show as a way to see Krissi face-to-face, but at the last minute they told him Krissi wouldn’t be appearing on the set.

I’ve always felt a big part of a father’s job is to protect his children, particularly his daughters. But the people around Krissi were denying me the chance to protect and care for my little girl and it was driving me crazy. Of course Krissi wasn’t making it easy for me either. She was still mad at me for my relationship with Alicia, thinking it somehow meant a rejection of her and her mother. When Alicia and I had Cassius, she wanted to hold that against me as well. I had another child with somebody else and I was happy, so she took it
personally. And I was not given the chance to make it right, to get her to look at the situation with mature, grown-up eyes. She was still seeing the situation as a child would—the same way she saw it when her mother was around to tell her I didn’t love them because I had moved on. But I needed her to develop the mind-set of the young woman that she was. And I wanted to help her.

Whitney’s funeral was yet another nightmare for me, stage-directed by the Houston family. Tommy and my lawyer Chris Brown (no relation) had several days of discussions about my attending, when I was arriving, who was coming with me. They were well aware that I planned on coming to New Jersey with my family in tow—my three children who had also been Whitney’s stepchildren. She had helped to raise them, had been a key, loving figure in the lives of Landon, LaPrincia and Bobby Jr. Of course they would be there right alongside me as we said good-bye to this woman they loved and who loved them. Chris was given the instructions on when we should arrive, where our car should drop us off, etc.

The morning was busy with tense activity as we all got dressed. Alicia was a big help in making sure things ran smoothly. My old friends from New Edition all wanted to come to the funeral with me. In a major coincidence, the group was performing the next day on our tour in Newark, where the funeral was being held. But I told them that while they were free to attend, I just wanted to roll with my family.

We arrived on time to New Hope Baptist Church in Newark. Alicia and Cashy were back at the hotel; she thought it would be best if she stayed away. The crowd was teeming with celebrities, many of them old friends of mine. But I wasn’t in the mind-set to be social. I felt like I had been to an endless parade of funerals by this point. I was tired of the black suits, the tears, the emotional turmoil. And most of all, I wanted to see Krissi. This was the one place where I was certain we would be together.

From the moment we walked into the church, things went bad quickly. We were escorted to the second row of pews, behind where Krissi would be sitting in the first row, in front of Whitney’s casket. We sat for a short while, waiting for the services to start, watching the celebrities stream into the church. While we were waiting, one of the security guys came up to us and told us we had to move.

“Excuse me? I don’t understand,” I said to him.

“Sir, you have to move,” he repeated in the even, hushed tone that ushers take at funeral services.

“But we’re supposed to be sitting here,” I said, growing angrier. “We’re not moving.”

The guy paused, then he said, “You can stay, but your kids have to move to the back.”

“Sir, we’re not moving from this spot,” I said. “You’re gonna have to move us.”

But then I glanced at my kids, who looked like they were in shock, and I knew instantly that getting into some type of
loud scene with these people was not the right move. I saw Brandy and Ray J sitting in the row behind me, watching.
So they’re trying to move my family behind Ray J?

I leaned over to my kids.

“Let’s go,” I said.

But before I left the church, I had one thing I needed to do: I walked up to the casket, kissed it, and said good-bye to my ex-wife. Then I turned around and led my children out of the church. Since the primary purpose of my attendance at the service was to pay my last respects to this woman whom I had loved for all of my adult life, my mission there had been accomplished. I know many have tried to criticize me for leaving Whitney’s funeral under those circumstances. But I’m fine with my decision that day. It was about bringing my family to the church and saying good-bye to Whitney. That was all. I was not going to stay there and let us once again become pawns in a game being orchestrated by the Houston family. They had days to figure out where to seat us and to acknowledge that my children, once a big part of Whitney’s life, should be sitting with their little sister. Anything else would be cruel and callous treatment. And now suddenly there was confusion about where the Browns would be sitting? As a long line of celebrities breezed into the church and were led to their seats up front? No, I wasn’t there for that—and wouldn’t subject my children to it.

Besides, I knew the rest of the day was going to be the show anyway. I didn’t need to be there for the show.

When we emerged from the church, we saw Krissi in the back of a black Town Car outside of the church. My kids were excited; getting to spend time with her would easily make up for the ridiculousness in the church. We immediately rushed toward the car so we could greet her. But right away, four security guards appeared and got in front of me. They told me to stay back. It was another punch to the gut for the entire family. My kids were incredulous; all three of them started crying. I was incensed that the Houstons could treat my family with such disregard, especially my children, who were Krissi’s siblings. They had brought my three grown children to tears. LaPrincia had already tearfully called Alicia on the phone and told her to send the car for us because we had left the church.

Just put yourself in my shoes here for a moment: You spend a decade and a half raising a child along with the woman of your dreams, both of you loving this child so much that at times it takes your breath away. Angels come down and take this woman away from both of you, tearing a huge hole in your hearts. And then, inexplicably, some outside force steps in and tells you that you are such a pariah, such an evil person, that not only are you not allowed to hold your child in your arms on the day her mother is being buried, you can’t even see her. And if you object too loudly, it is you who will look like the irrational fool.

Here we are, years later, and the thought of those moments still knocks me into a deep funk.

The rest of that day was surreal for us all. I was still numb from coming so close to embracing my baby girl and being rudely dismissed. Alicia was fielding phone calls from people like Reverend Jesse Jackson and Reverend Al Sharpton, trying to get me to return to the service. We had the television on and watched some of those folks outside the church, talking about my exit. But I didn’t have any regrets about what I did. Essentially I was trying to protect my children. I would have been tortured by the idea that I was sitting in the front of the church while they were separated from me, mourning without their father. The memory of that would have haunted me much more than leaving the church before the singing and preaching started. My only regret was not being there to console Krissi.