Vinay Menon
The tragic life and death of Bobbi Kristina Brown,
During the American Music Awards in 1994, where she won eight trophies, Whitney Houston carried her baby daughter to the stage for an acceptance speech.
“I couldn’t leave her, she started crying,” Houston told the laughing crowd, beaming at Bobbi Kristina Brown, who was 11 months old.
It’s heartbreaking to now watch the footage. Houston’s maternal instincts get freighted with the emotional weight that crystallizes when a throwaway line seems darkly prophetic. That line — “I couldn’t leave her, she started crying” — gets buried in a deeper mine now that mother and daughter are gone.
Glancing around, twice grabbing at the microphone, the baby in the white dress that evening looked so secure in Houston’s arms. This was the world’s first real glimpse of Bobbi Kristina. And the world itself seemed like hers to conquer with all the inherited fame, power and wealth.
But this would prove to be a cruel illusion, the first of many.
In the years between her mother’s triumphant night in 1994 and Sunday evening, when Bobbi Kristina died at the age of 22 inside Peachtree Christian Hospice in Atlanta, any sense of security had given way to turmoil, chaos and tragedy.
Houston died in 2012 after accidentally drowning in a bathtub at the Beverly Hilton hotel. Bobbi Kristina was in the lobby at the time. Upon hearing the news, she collapsed. She was so hysterical, so inconsolable, she was rushed to the hospital.
In many ways, she never recovered. The baby who cried when her mother left to scoop up an award was now, at the age of 18, forced to realize her mother was never coming back. The end of Whitney was the beginning of the end of Bobbi Kristina.
There was always a special bond between the two, one that transcended the swirling dysfunction in their midst. Houston was a devoted mother. But she was also trapped in an increasingly toxic relationship with the singer Bobby Brown, whom she divorced in 2007 amid charges of domestic violence and drug abuse. On Bravo’s Being Bobby Brown, the reality TV show that debuted two years earlier, the couple were sometimes high, sometimes erratic and often given to questionable judgment.
Their daughter was just 12 as cameras documented her reality.
Her sense of normal was already plainly abnormal.
As time went by, the demons that encircled her mother — an autopsy would later reveal multiple drugs in Houston’s system, including cocaine — seemed determined to imprison the child. As a teenager, there were reports of a suicide attempt. After Houston’s death, there were reports Bobbi Kristina was herself struggling with addiction.
Then a few months later, she stunned members of her own family by announcing plans to marry Nick Gordon, a man whom many viewed as her “sibling.” It was Houston who brought Gordon into her home like a stray cat when he was a lost youth.
And now it was Bobbi Kristina who was clinging to this figure from her childhood, as if a relationship with Gordon might turn back the clock. She had become the erratic one. Gordon discovered Bobbi Kristina face down in the bathtub at her Georgia townhouse on Jan. 31. She never regained consciousness. On Monday, the coroner’s office said it would conduct an autopsy. But close to six months after the incident, expectations for medical clarity are muted.
Authorities are treating this as a criminal investigation, though if and when charges will be laid remains a mystery. Bobbi Kristina’s family, meanwhile, is very clear on who they believe is responsible. Last month, in a civil lawsuit against Gordon, they alleged he illegally transferred money from Bobbi Kristina’s bank account, including $11,000 after she was in coma. They also allege he was physically abusive, once dragging Bobbi Kristina up a flight of stairs by her hair and punching her in the face with such force it knocked out a tooth.
While none of this has been proven in court, this much is clear: Bobbi Kristina Brown endured too much pain and suffering in her young life. She never followed in her mother’s superstar footsteps and, more distressing, never really found a path of her own. As a child, from the outside looking in, she seemed to be blessed. As an adult, from the inside looking out, she must have felt cursed.
That baby onstage in 1994 never had a chance. vmenon@thestar.ca
After Whitney Houston’s death, there were reports Bobbi Kristina was herself struggling with addiction and suicide