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

  Remembering Whitney

  My Story of Love, Loss, and the Night the Music Stopped

  CISSY HOUSTON

  with Lisa Dickey

  with a foreword by Dionne Warwick

  Dedication

  This book is dedicated to my immediate family, particularly my sons and my grandchildren, and to all the world of wonderful fans who loved my daughter. Hopefully you may get to know Whitney through the love I’ve shown in these pages.

  Epigraph

  “I’ll lend you for a little time a child of mine,” He said.

  “For you to love while she lives and mourn for when she’s dead. . . .”

  —adapted from “I’ll Lend You a Child” by Edgar Guest

  Contents

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Foreword by Dionne Warwick

  Part One

  Chapter 1

  The Night the Music Stopped

  Chapter 2

  A Child of Newark

  Chapter 3

  The Gospel Truth

  Chapter 4

  Sweet Inspirations

  Chapter 5

  Life on Dodd Street

  Chapter 6

  Training the Voice

  Chapter 7

  Separation

  Photo Section 1

  Part Two

  Chapter 8

  Enter Clive Davis

  Chapter 9

  Fame

  Chapter 10

  Welcome Home Heroes

  Chapter 11

  The Bodyguard . . . and Bobby Brown

  Chapter 12

  “I Never Asked for This Madness”

  Chapter 13

  “I Know Him So Well”

  Chapter 14

  A Very Bad Year

  Photo Section 2

  Part Three

  Chapter 15

  Atlanta

  Chapter 16

  The Intervention

  Chapter 17

  The Comeback

  Chapter 18

  “I Look to You”

  Chapter 19

  Bringing My Daughter Home

  Epilogue

  Epigraph

  Acknowledgments

  Selected Cissy Houston Discography

  Selected Whitney Houston Discography

  Index

  About the Author

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Foreword

  by Dionne Warwick

  I’ve known Cissy Houston my whole life. She’s my aunt—her sister Lee is my mother—but because we’re only seven years apart, she felt more like an older sister to me.

  When I was growing up, Cissy even lived with us for a while in East Orange, so I got to know her pretty well. I can still hear her voice, telling my sister Dee Dee and me, “I am older, and you are going to do as I say.” She might have felt like an older sister to us, but she never let us forget she was our aunt. She was a strong young woman then, and she is a strong, loving woman now.

  From the time we were children, we all sang together at St. Luke’s A.M.E. Church in Newark, where my grandfather was the minister. Later, when he moved away, we all joined New Hope Baptist Church. My sister Dee Dee and I sang in the junior choir there, and Cissy rehearsed us and arranged songs for us. Music was always in our family’s blood. But there were two things even more important to us than music: family and faith.

  When she started having children, Cissy became very mother-oriented. Her kids were primary in her life—she had to be with her babies. There was a great deal of love in their house. And we all loved her children, Gary, Michael, and Nippy.

  When Cissy’s kids were small, I used to like to bring them out on the road with me. By that time, I had a solo career and was touring all over the world, so during the summers, when they weren’t in school, I’d bring them out to join me. They were just regular little kids on summer vacation, but they did learn how to use room service very, very quickly. It was all I could do to keep those children from ordering everything in the world up to the room.

  Nippy used to talk with me about her mother, just the usual kids’ stuff of “Why won’t she let me do this?” and “How come the other kids get to do that?” But later on, she came to realize why her mother did the things she did. We all were brought up in the same way—it was instilled in us to respect our elders, to love God, and to walk the straight and narrow. And that’s what Cissy tried to teach her own children, too.

  Cissy has always wanted the best for everyone in her family. She’s always giving encouragement and support, and she’s tried on many occasions to give advice. Whenever she saw something that wasn’t sitting too well with her, she’d speak up. As I did. In our family, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.

  But while Cissy was strong and loving, Nippy was always a little girl, even during her womanhood. Yes, she was ambitious, and she had a silent strength. But I’m not sure it was ever really tapped into. We all know of Nippy’s beauty and her amazing vocal skills. But in Cissy’s book, you will learn about the little girl behind all that.

  It’s a privilege to have a peek inside someone’s life, and that’s what Cissy is offering in this book. The truth has always been paramount for Cissy, and I believe she has given the truth within these pages. The fact that she found the strength to write it now, given the grief she has suffered, is a testament to her faith: she is being led to share her true feelings about herself and her beloved daughter.

  I hope all of us can take a lesson or two from it, and that with this book, everyone can read about and understand who Whitney Houston truly was.

  Dionne Warwick

  November 2012

  Part One

  CHAPTER 1

  The Night the Music Stopped

  It was the middle of the afternoon on a Saturday when I heard my doorbell ring.

  I wasn’t expecting anyone, and walking to the door I felt a little irritated about a surprise visit. But when I opened it, no one was there, so I just shut the door and went back to whatever I was doing. Who would be ringing my bell and disappearing in the middle of the day? My apartment building had a doorman, and it wasn’t like people were just dropping by all the time.

  Not long after, I heard that bell ring again. I got up and went to answer it, really irritated now. But again, no one was there. Now, this just didn’t make sense. Why would someone be messing with me like this? I called down to the front desk.

  “Has anyone come up to see me?” I asked the concierge.

  “No, Mrs. Houston,” he said. “I haven’t seen anyone on the cameras, either.” Well then, who was ringing my bell?

  Not long after that, around six or six-thirty in the evening, my phone rang. When I picked it up, all I could hear was screaming.

  “Oh, Mommy! It’s Nippy! It’s Nippy!” It was my son Gary on the line, and he was hysterical.

  “Gary, what’s wrong?”

  “It’s Nippy,” he said again. “They found her!”

  “Found her where?”

  “They found her upstairs,” he cried. “Th
ey found her upstairs and I’m not going back up there!”

  “Gary, what happened?” I snapped, frightened now. “You’ve got to tell me what’s wrong!”

  He never did say what had happened, maybe because he didn’t know exactly, or maybe because he was in shock. He just kept mumbling, “Oh, Mommy, Mommy, Mommy,” until I finally said, “Gary, is she dead?”

  And he said, “Yes, Mommy. She’s dead.”

  And that was the moment my whole world shattered.

  I don’t know what I did or said after that. I was told later that I screamed so loudly that the whole building must have heard me, but my mind was absolutely blank, except for one thought: My baby was gone.

  Somehow, people started showing up at my apartment. My niece Diane came, and other friends and family. The phone rang, the doorbell chimed, people brought food, people tried to hug me. But I just sat in my chair, crying. I was in shock, and even now, I really don’t know how I survived that evening—or the days that followed.

  As soon as the news got out, all sorts of people surrounded my apartment building. Reporters lined the lobby trying to get in to ask questions, and strangers snuck up to my floor wanting to pay their condolences. The crowds got so thick outside the building that the police had to be called to keep people away. But I didn’t know any of that at the time, because all I could do was weep and moan and wail. All I wanted was to be left alone to grieve for my daughter.

  The last time I’d seen Nippy, I had been a little upset with her. It was around the Christmas holidays, just six weeks or so earlier, and she’d suddenly showed up in New York with my granddaughter, Krissi. Nippy wanted me to come into the city and join them, and my sons Gary and Michael, but she hadn’t told me they were coming, so I’d made other plans. I was going up to Sparta, New Jersey, to have Christmas dinner with my friend Nell, and I didn’t feel right breaking it off, since we’d been planning it for a long time. I wanted to see Nippy, of course, but I just wished she would give me a little more notice when she was coming through.

  So I went up to Sparta and spent the night there, and then the next day Nippy called me again, asking me to please come into New York and see them. She was staying at the New York Palace hotel, and Gary and Michael and their wives and children were all there, so it looked to be a nice family reunion. I went into Manhattan, excited to see the whole family together, which was a real rarity these days.

  Nippy had just finished working on her new movie, Sparkle, and she looked fantastic. The whole day she was in good spirits—laughing and joking with her brothers, and playing with the kids. She’d always had a good relationship with her brothers, and as I watched them laughing together it felt like old times. We had all been through a lot in recent years, but this day it felt like we didn’t have a care in the world.

  At one point in the day, as I was sitting on the sofa, Nippy leaned over and put her head in my lap. This was something she didn’t do all that often, but I always loved it when she did. She and I were very different people, and like any mother and daughter, we’d had our difficult moments over the years. But when Nippy would put her head in my lap, those were the moments that bonded us together, and I cherished them.

  I knew Nippy was returning to Atlanta the next day, and I hated that our visit was so short. I was always asking her to come up and visit, as I hadn’t gotten to see very much of her in recent years. But now that she seemed to be in a better place, with her new movie and a new lightness about her, I hoped that would change. As I got ready to leave, Nippy and I stood talking at the door.

  “I’ll come back soon, Mommy,” she said. “I’ve got to go to L.A. for the Grammys in February, but I’ll come see you after that.”

  My daughter had come a long way from being a skinny little girl with a big voice growing up in Newark, New Jersey. She had traveled the world and become a sophisticated, powerful woman—but there was something in our relationship that always brought out the child in her. When I looked at Nippy, I saw the little girl who used to grab a broom and belt out songs in our basement studio like she was onstage at Carnegie Hall. And I saw the uncertain girl who wanted everyone to like her, who just wanted to sing to make people happy—not to sell millions of records or be a global superstar.

  But she did become a superstar, and the pressures that brought eventually overwhelmed her. She endured so much, and was criticized so mercilessly by people who didn’t understand her—people who didn’t know who she was. She always used to say to me, “Mommy, I just want to sing.” Yet that would never be enough.

  For everything Nippy went through, with drugs, with her relationships, with the pitfalls of fame, she really did seem to be on an upswing in the weeks before she died. During those weeks, whenever we spoke on the phone, she sounded so good, like she was feeling better than she had in years.

  When she called me in early February, though, just before she left for Los Angeles and the Grammy Awards, she didn’t sound like herself. There was a sadness in her voice. Nippy never liked to share her problems with me, so I didn’t know exactly what was wrong. We all have our ups and downs, so I didn’t worry too much about it. I knew she’d be busy in Los Angeles, with the awards and all the other events that went on, and I didn’t really expect to hear from her again while she was there.

  But on the Friday before the awards, she did call me. She sounded a little better, though she still didn’t share much of what was going on. I don’t remember most of what we talked about, but I do remember the last thing she said to me on the phone. Back in December, she had promised to come see me after the Grammys, and before she hung up on that Friday, she said it again. “I’ll be home soon, Mommy,” she told me. “I promise.”

  Those were the last words I would ever hear her speak.

  The next day, Nippy died. And the days that followed were a seemingly endless blur of grief and pain. There were times when I didn’t think I could live through the despair of losing my baby girl. I just couldn’t believe I would never see her, or hear her voice, in this world again. I still can’t believe it.

  But I did take solace in one thing. On that terrible day, when my doorbell kept ringing in those hours before Gary’s call, I believe it was my beautiful Nippy, keeping her promise to me—that somehow, some way, she came to see me, just as she said she would.

  CHAPTER 2

  A Child of Newark

  It was a hot August night in 1963 when Nippy was born. I was doing session work as a background singer, and despite being overdue and big as all get-out, I’d worked a full day. My husband, John, picked me up at the studio in Manhattan and drove me home to our apartment in Newark, New Jersey, but not long after we walked in the front door, my water broke. So it was right back out the door as John put me in the car and hurried to Presbyterian Hospital.

  From the moment I found out I was pregnant, I had hoped this baby would be a girl. I already had two boys, my sons Gary and Michael, and I knew this would be my last child. I was tired of having babies, and I surely didn’t want to go through what my mother had endured—she had eight children by the time she turned thirty. Three was enough for me, but I desperately wanted this last one to be a girl—although personally, I was convinced that I was about to have another big-headed boy. At that time, of course, you couldn’t find out until the baby was born. There were old wives’ tales about being able to tell depending on whether you carried the baby high or low, but nobody really knew.

  What I did know was that this baby already seemed to love music. All during my pregnancy, I’d been doing session work—singing backup for artists such as Solomon Burke, Wilson Pickett, the Isley Brothers, Aretha Franklin, and my niece Dionne Warwick—and the whole time, that baby never stopped moving inside me. Sometimes, it even seemed to be moving to the music. So, one thing I knew for certain—that child was going to have rhythm!

  We got to the hospital and checked in, but I don’t remember much after that. This w
as a big baby, and the delivery wasn’t easy. After hours of pain, the doctors gave me an anesthetic to knock me out, and when I finally woke up, John came into the room and told me we had a baby girl. I don’t know why, but I didn’t believe him. I thought he was just playing a joke on me.

  “I’m telling you, Cissy, it’s a girl,” he said, laughing.

  “Stop that mess, John! You’re lying.” John always liked to tease and joke, but I wasn’t having any of that right now.

  “No, really,” he insisted. “It’s a girl.”

  “And she’s gorgeous,” chimed in a nurse who was standing there.

  Well, there was one way to find out. “Where is she?” I asked.

  It turned out the hospital staff were taking her around to show her off. The nurses were just carrying my little baby all over the hospital floor, showing her to their coworkers and everyone else. It was as if she belonged to the public the very second she was born.

  I was so mad—here I was, lying exhausted in a hospital bed, and I couldn’t even see my own child because everyone else had to get a look at her first.

  “You better go and get my baby!” I told John.

  One of the nurses hustled off, and a few minutes later I finally saw my baby girl for the first time. Someone had already tied a little pink bow in her hair, and she was the most beautiful little thing I’d ever seen. I held her in my arms, and I couldn’t believe it. She was eight pounds and four ounces, and she had everything—a head full of hair, eyelashes, fingernails, everything.