My Son Marshall, My Son Eminem: Setting the Record Straight on My Life as Eminem's Mother

by Nelson, Debbie

  The wedding ceremony was a low-key affair at a pastor’s house. I wore a pretty summer dress; Curt was in jeans. Then we went back to Mom’s for the reception.

  That was mistake number two. Curt liked a drink, and he was soon drunk. I escaped early with Marshall, leaving Curt at the reception.

  The following day Curt and I had a huge argument. Early on, I’d spelled out to him that I didn’t want alcohol around my child. I’d seen the damage it had done to my family. But he ignored my wishes and kept on drinking. He said no one was going to tell him what to do in his own house.

  Two weeks after our wedding, Curt took off on his motorcycle and didn’t come back that night. I left the next morning.

  Marshall, who’d heard stories about his father from his Great-Aunt Edna, suddenly started asking about his daddy. Edna eventually gave me an address in California, and Marshall spent hours writing a letter. Every day he waited for the mail to arrive, hoping his dad would write. His envelope finally came back with the words “return to sender, no such person” scrawled across the front in Bruce’s handwriting. I didn’t tell Marshall I recognized his father’s writing.

  Marshall loved animals, so I filled our home with pets. He caught snakes and put them in my bed for a joke. One day I came home to discover his guinea pig wrapped in plastic wrap in the microwave.

  “He’s cold, I’m warming him up,” Marshall said, as I switched the oven off.

  The guinea pig wasn’t cold; he was dead. Marshall was distraught as I explained his pet had gone to heaven. He insisted we bury him properly, in a shoebox with little holes cut into it so the guinea pig could breathe on his way to the afterlife.

  Marshall didn’t always understand just how delicate some creatures were. When he was seven, I turned my back for a second at the doctor’s office, and he dropped a book into an aquarium.

  “That little monster has killed all the fish!” I heard an old lady shout.

  Mortified, I pulled the book out of the tank, then offered to replace the fish, assuming they were just cheap goldfish. It turned out they were worth between a hundred and two hundred dollars each. Trust Marshall to kill the expensive ones!

  The word monster was bandied about many times by other people to describe Marshall. I lost my job in a store after he knocked down a display shelf, then spread-eagled himself across an aisle, screaming.

  “Get that damn monster out of here, now!” the manager ordered. I tried to defend Marshall, saying he was only a child. But the manager was having none of it. “He’s not a kid; he’s a monster,” he said.

  I had a falling out with my best friends, Bonnie and Theresa, when Marshall pulled an old woman’s hair and threw food around in a restaurant where I worked. They said he was a brat who needed spanking, but I wouldn’t hear a word against my son.

  School was a problem, too. Marshall hated it. He was small for his age, so he was bullied from day one. He was a great actor, constantly pretending his leg hurt or his belly ached. I spoiled him rotten, giving him everything he wanted, including days off of school.

  He clung to me when I dropped him off at school and panicked if he thought I was going anywhere without him. Once, he saw me putting laundry in the car, thought I was leaving, and ran screaming toward the house. He was in such a state that he put his arm through the glass door as it closed. I grabbed a large towel and ran to put pressure on his arm. It was obvious to me (and later verified in the hospital) that he had come very close to cutting the main artery in his wrist. It was a really close call, and I was so scared. There was blood everywhere. I rushed him to the hospital. He needed twelve stitches and still has the scar today.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Saint Joseph enjoyed a mini tourist boom in the 1970s sparked by Paper Moon, the black-and-white movie starring eight-year-old Tatum O’Neal and her father, Ryan, as Depression-era Bible-selling con artists. Peter Bogdanovich used several downtown locations, as well as the Missouri River Bridge. Tatum became the youngest person ever to win an Oscar, and the movie remains one of my favorites. It captures Saint Joseph’s small-town charm, something I’d always loved. But by 1979, with a second failed marriage behind me, I needed a change of scenery.

  Salvation appeared in the form of Nan. She lived in Warren, Michigan, with her partner, Johnny, and needed help. Grandpa Johnny, as we called him, was seriously ill with diabetes, and Nan had heart problems. Nan wrote me a letter to ask if I’d help look after them. I was working as a certified nurse’s assistant at a Methodist hospital. Nan had always been there for me, especially when I was young, so I quit my job straightaway. That night I packed up the car and Marshall and I set off for our two-day cross-country trip. We sang all the way. A new life beckoned.

  Warren is a big sprawling suburb a few miles from downtown Detroit. In the 1950s and ’60s, the population had gone from just 727 people to 89,426. The population doubled to 179,260 in the 1970s. The reason for this expansion was what is known in history as “white flight.” As African Americans moved into Detroit, the white families moved out. Detroit’s main thoroughfares are all mile markers, hence the names 6 Mile, 7 Mile, 8 Mile, and so on. For the most part, 8 Mile is a nondescript highway dotted with gas stations and small shopping malls that splits Detroit from Warren and the outer suburbs.

  We moved around more than I wanted to. Every time I redecorated a house, the landlord admired it and decided to sell. This happened at least three times until I stopped letting the landlords in to inspect my handiwork. We lived in nice neighborhoods; we were never trailer trash. I was fastidious about my homes. They were always spotless, and Marshall had everything his heart desired.

  I’d always wanted a big family and felt Marshall would be less shy if he had siblings. We used to drop off his old toys at the Catholic Children’s Charity. One day we were chatting to a social worker who introduced us to three little sisters, Barbara, Wendy, and Tammy. They were fourteen, twelve, and seven, and had been pushed around foster homes for most of their lives.

  I didn’t know it then, but the girls were distantly related to me on Nan’s side. As we tried to leave, Wendy, who was considered to be slow, grabbed my leg and wouldn’t let go. I offered to let them stay for a holiday. Before I knew it, they were living with us full-time along with their five-year-old brother, Eric.

  At last I had the big brood of children I always wanted. I had a medium-size two-bedroom house with a half-acre of land at the back. I partitioned off the utility room to turn it into a bedroom for the girls. We had two Doberman dogs, a ferret, several hamsters, and later on goldfish and even baby turtles, and the house was full of children’s voices. The only person who wasn’t happy was Marshall. He was so jealous of the attention I gave the others.

  I often came home from my job as a doctor’s receptionist to discover the children crying outside. Marshall had locked them out. He refused to play with them. Every evening we all sat in a circle on the floor to discuss our problems, but Marshall wouldn’t let me sit next to anyone but him. Sometimes he stormed outside and wouldn’t come back in until I retrieved him. Eventually, he blurted out what was really bothering him.

  “You love them more than me,” he said, bursting into tears.

  I took him in my arms and told him, “I love you, you’re my natural son, my whole world. If these other kids go away you’ll be lonely and you will miss them. Can I be their mom, too?”

  “No,” he said. “You can be their sister or something.”

  Marshall did not want to share me, but after our little chat, there was an uneasy truce. He demanded to speak about his day first when we sat in our circle. He glowered and pulled faces, snatching his toys away if they wanted to play with them.

  At first Wendy was withdrawn. She rocked backwards and forwards sucking her thumb, but gradually she opened up. She copied everything Marshall did, refusing to wear a dress because she wanted jeans like Marshall. Before long she was chattering away with the others and even wearing skirts. I loved nurturing those kids. Barb, the eldest
, could be rebellious, threatening to sleep in the garage with the Dobermans or run away if she didn’t get her own way, but generally we were a big happy family.

  Life wasn’t easy. I received no money, just food stamps and free medical care for the foster kids. But I hated using the stamps, so we played pretend Monopoly money with them before we spent them.

  I shopped at Samra’s Meat Market. The owner, Mr. Samra, was lovely. One day he said he wanted me to meet his son Fred Jr., who’d recently gotten divorced. A week or so later, I was leaving the meat market laden with bags of shopping and all the kids in tow when a good-looking guy offered to help. He introduced himself as Fred.

  “How many children do you have?” he asked, eyeing Marshall, Eric, and the three girls.

  “Five,” I said.

  “Wow, that’s a lot,” he said. “I can’t believe you have so many. You look so young.”

  “Only one’s my natural child,” I told him. “I care for the others.”

  Fred appeared impressed. His marriage had been childless, but he was like a big kid himself. He was full of fun, an absolute scream to be around.

  We went out to dinner just once before he got to know the children for real. He was so good with Marshall. They played football together. Fred liked a martini or two after work and once fell out of a tree he’d drunkenly clambered up in a race with Marshall.

  Fred was dark with a beautiful olive complexion. He was sturdily built but tiny in stature, not more than five-foot-three. I used to tease him because he wore heeled shoes to make himself look taller.

  He asked me to marry him constantly, but I always refused. I loved him dearly and didn’t see the point of marrying again. Apart from his drinking, which he tended to do secretly, we were happy.

  We went on road trips. Fred was as excited as Marshall when we saw Niagara Falls for the first time. They couldn’t wait to get sprayed with water right underneath the falls. We also drove to Tennessee and stayed in a lovely hotel in the Smoky Mountains. On other occasions we took off in the car and just stopped wherever we wanted.

  The only blip was Fred’s mother, who did not approve of me and constantly told Fred that he didn’t need a ready-made family. But we tried to ignore her interfering.

  Marshall called Fred “Dad.” He’d never done that with any of my previous men friends. In reality, they were a pair of big kids together. For the first time I felt as if I had the large happy family I’d always wanted.

  Marshall and I often said, “Every time something good happens to us, something bad does, too.”

  Sure enough, the house caught fire.

  I was on my way back home from work when I saw smoke pouring out of the windows. Marshall and the sisters were inside. I charged in, hauled them out, then grabbed the phone to dial 911. The phone literally melted in my hand. I was overcome with smoke but managed to stagger outside. I was hospitalized for several hours with carbon monoxide poisoning, and the kids also had to be checked. Thankfully they were okay.

  The smoke and water destroyed everything we owned. The foster kids went back into care. We had no clothes, no furniture and nowhere to stay. Fred took off back to his parents. He was useless under pressure, and I was left to pick up the pieces. Although I managed to salvage a few of our things, the house was uninhabitable and we had to find a new place to live.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  In 1981, when Marshall was nine, I enrolled him at Dort Elementary School in Roseville, Michigan. He was tiny for his age, and as the new kid on the block he was once again a target for bullies. His worst tormentor was DeAngelo Bailey, a big black kid from Detroit who was two years older. I didn’t know it then, but Bailey used to put his head down, scuff his feet, roar, and then charge like a bull at Marshall.

  The first incident happened on October 15, two days before Marshall’s tenth birthday. Marshall came home in tears with a busted lip and bruised nose. He wouldn’t tell me who’d attacked him. He just said it was a big, older boy. He’d been badly winded and was throwing up. I called the school principal to complain, then spent the night lying on my son’s bed as he tossed and turned.

  A month later Marshall again came home complaining that he’d been beaten up by the same boy. Again, he wouldn’t tell me the bully’s name. He was terrified. Again, I called the school, begging the staff to look out for my son. Marshall started having really bad nightmares. He’d wake up screaming that the big boy was beating him. Trying to coax him to school was heartbreaking. He would just start yelling. Then he’d say he was ill, that his leg hurt or his stomach ached. I spent hours trying to talk to him about what had happened. But still Marshall would not tell me the boy’s name.

  Just before Christmas, Marshall again came home crying. This time he’d been beaten up really badly. He had cuts and scratches all over him. It looked as if he’d been in a fight with a cat. I was at my wits’ end. Again, I screamed at the school to do something.

  I couldn’t stand to see my son in so much pain. He’d always hated school, using bullying as an excuse for days off, but usually things improved when he stopped being the new boy. I hoped this would be the case with Dort Elementary.

  I always collected Marshall from school, but on January13, he didn’t come running out to greet me as usual. He was nowhere to be found.

  Eventually, two kids told me Marshall was in the bathroom. I ran into the school, screaming out his name. I burst into the restroom, and there I found him lying in a pool of blood, his body jerking. I scooped him into my arms, laid him on the back seat of the car, then rushed him to the hospital. I was hysterical.

  Marshall spent four days in the hospital, slipping in and out of consciousness. I never left his side, except to go to the chapel and pray. His nose bled constantly; so did his ears. His vision came and went. He had the most terrible nightmares. He’d curl up into a ball and cry as I rocked him to sleep in my arms; then he’d wake up screaming. The doctors called this a “burst of irregular activity in the brain.” It was horrible to see my son like that.

  “Tell me who did this to you,” I urged him on countless occasions. But Marshall just shook his head. Clearly he was too terrified to give me the boy’s name.

  We saw twenty-one doctors over four days. There were ear, nose, and brain specialists lining up to take a look at Marshall. He was suffering from cerebral concussion, post-concussion syndrome, and acute post-traumatic stress syndrome. His vision was also damaged.

  Eventually the doctors called me into a conference room at the hospital. They told me Marshall had suffered a slight cerebral hemorrhage.

  “There’s no hope,” one said. “He’ll never be the same. He needs to be institutionalized.”

  “There has to be something you can do,” I begged. But the doctor just shook his head. His colleagues stood silently beside him.

  I refused to accept the diagnosis. I’d fought hard to escape my horrible childhood and Marshall’s father, Bruce, and I wasn’t going to give up on my baby. Instead, I took Marshall home and vowed to nurse him back to health myself. He was all I had. I was not going to lose him.

  At first he was like an infant. He could just about clamber onto my lap. He would curl into a ball to sleep, then wake up screaming. His nightmares were terrifying. He’d jolt awake, leap up, and start pummeling pillows or tearing down the curtains. It was as though he were fighting the bully in his sleep.

  I had to reteach Marshall the simplest things. As a baby he was a fast learner who walked before his first birthday and spoke in entire sentences at two. Now I had to show him how to put his left and right feet into the correct shoes, how to tie his laces and button his shirt. He couldn’t even pour cereal into a bowl. He was also on medication to prevent seizures, keep his blood pressure stable, and stop his nose and ears bleeding.

  Fred took off. He didn’t want to be around “drama,” as he called it. Anyway, I barely had time for him. My entire life was focused on getting Marshall better.

  I couldn’t work because Marshall was too ill. W
e had to go on welfare. It broke my heart. I’d never begged for anything before. I did my best to hold everything together, but there were many nights when I just sobbed myself to sleep.

  I’d found out DeAngelo Bailey’s name from Marshall’s friends, but it took months before I could coax anything about him out of my son. Even though I was now home-schooling him, teaching him how to read and write all over again, he was still terrified Bailey would come after him again. I reassured him constantly that he was safe.

  Slowly, he told me what had happened on January 13. It was snowing, and he was playing “king of the hill” with a group of pals in the schoolyard when Bailey appeared. He threw a chunk of ice at Marshall, striking him on the head. Marshall lost his balance and fell backwards through a snowdrift. He cracked his head as he hit the ground.

  I decided to consult a lawyer to see what, if anything, could be done. I was going through living hell with my son, and I didn’t want anyone else to suffer like that at the hands of bullies. Marshall’s medical bills were thousands of dollars, and I hadn’t been able to work while looking after him. I found a lawyer and filed an affidavit, explaining what had happened. A staff member laughed at me.

  “You won’t sue us. I’ll say he bumped his head on the school door on the way out of the building,” he sneered.

  Eventually the case was thrown out of court. The judge ruled that Michigan schools were immune from lawsuits. But I organized a petition, gathered other parents’ names, and did my best to make sure everyone knew what had happened to my son. Shortly afterwards, the education authorities offered insurance to buy in case of an accident on school property. I like to think that my case against Dort Elementary went some way to making that happen.

  Marshall also got his own back: in 1999 he named Bailey as his tormentor in his song “Brain Damage” on The Slim Shady LP. Bailey, then a sanitation worker, tried to sue Marshall for a million dollars, claiming that his privacy had been invaded and that he’d become an object of hate. He said Marshall’s slurs had harmed his potential career as a rap star. I was shocked when I heard this. How dare he?