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

by Nelson, Debbie

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Marshall improved slowly. One day he could tie his shoelaces; the next he’d forgotten. It was terribly frustrating for him, but every day he got a little bit better. Then, one morning, almost exactly a year after the attack, he shook me awake at 5 a.m. He was all excited. He’d dressed himself and made breakfast.

  “Look,” he said, dragging me by the hand to prove he’d laid the table properly and poured cereal into his bowl. He’d even collected the newspaper from the doormat and laid it out for me. I had to make sure I wasn’t dreaming. My prayers were finally being answered.

  A few hours later he peered out the window, watching other children heading to school. “How come I can’t go too?” he asked. I was delighted. Marshall was on the mend. I phoned his doctor with the news—I wanted to shout it to the world—and initially he was skeptical but agreed to run some more tests on Marshall in the morning. Excitedly I took Marshall in and he underwent some fresh electromyogram (EMG) and brainwave studies. His doctor couldn’t believe the improvement. He simply couldn’t explain it. I said that miracles never cease, and he agreed that Marshall’s recovery was indeed nothing short of a miracle. But he warned that another injury to Marshall’s head could kill him. So I bought Marshall a football helmet and made him wear it when he went outside to play. He hated it, but the other kids thought it was cool—for a while they all wanted one.

  Marshall loved rollerblading, football, and baseball. I encouraged him to play, to make new friends. But he was still terribly shy around strangers. Then he joined the Boy Scouts and became tight pals with a lad called Ronnie. They were inseparable. Ronnie, often with his two younger brothers in tow, loved spending time with us. I filled the house with children.

  Parents often said to me, “What are you doing to my child? He doesn’t want to come home!” I never understood why they said that. All I did was let the children play, help them with their homework, and cook them supper. We would also go bowling and roller-skating—only now I had become way too overprotective.

  I’d always loved music. From the age of twelve I’d hung around recording studios with Bonnie and Theresa, getting excited over local bands. The radio was always on, and Marshall and I used to practice singing in front of the mirror using combs or hairbrushes as microphones.

  The first concert I took Marshall to was the Talking Heads—their hit “Burning Down the House” was one of our favorites. Everyone was smoking a cigarette, and when someone passed a lit one to me, I took a drag. I started coughing and passed it on. I nearly passed out; the ground swam in front of me; I felt sick. I tried to take a step but couldn’t walk. The guy laughed when I asked what it was. He said it was pot, laced with an elephant tranquilizer. The show was almost over, and Marshall and I left. I wanted to crawl out, I felt so weird. A friend had to help me home.

  That was the one and only time in my life I tried pot. It turned me off forever. Luckily, it didn’t put Marshall or me off of live concerts.

  Next we saw Stevie Nicks. Marshall loved every second of the show. He stood just in front of me jiving, singing along to all her hits, including old Fleetwood Mac numbers such as “Rhiannon.” For someone who’d been unable to retain even the simplest of rhymes in his head after the attack, he’d bounced back like a champion.

  My brother Todd had a guitar; a couple of my friends played keyboards. But Marshall wasn’t interested in musical instruments. He was always humming and bouncing around to music, right from an early age, whether it was on the car seat, on the sofa, or in his high chair. And when he was tired he would bounce himself to sleep, humming as he bounced.

  As he got older, he always had a beat in his head. He’d play tapes on his boom box over and over, writing rhymes.

  Marshall and I wrote poetry to each other. I’d work several hours to get something just right, but he always managed to dash off a few lines at the speed of light.

  The disc jockey Kool Herc introduced the Jamaican tradition of “toasting”—firing off impromptu poetry over the top of reggae, funk, and disco beats—to inner-city New Yorkers in the 1970s. “Break-beat deejaying”—where the most danceable sections of funk songs are continually repeated—followed. The craze became known as hip-hop. It took a few more years to go mainstream, but Marshall caught on early.

  If I asked Marshall what he wanted to do when he grew up, he’d just shrug. I thought he’d make an excellent auctioneer—he fired off rhyming lyrics so fast that no one could understand him. I worried because he was asthmatic, yet he rarely paused to come up for air.

  For a while he wanted to be a scientist. He was fascinated by dinosaurs for years and had many books on the subject. He quizzed me constantly about where they had come from and why they had become extinct. Evolution intrigued him.

  His other big love was Nintendo. He could beat all the other kids hands down.

  Even my brother Todd, who adored Marshall and was always a father figure, constantly lectured me for spoiling him. He admitted he’d occasionally put Marshall in a headlock—when I wasn’t looking—for behaving badly over food. He didn’t hurt him; he just wanted to get his attention.

  “Listen, sister,” Todd said. “When you let that kid have a whole pizza, eat the center, then just throw the rest away, that’s too much even for me.”

  Todd was right: Marshall was forever taking one bite of a pancake or waffle before demanding something new to eat. But, after what he’d been through, I just wanted him to be happy. I could never be cross with him. I wanted him to have anything—everything—his heart desired.

  Marshall’s recovery, after that first awful year, was rapid. But despite his initial excitement about returning to school, it quickly became a problem again. I refused to send him back to Dort Elementary, but every time I enrolled him at a new school, within days he demanded to leave. He only had to hint that he was being bullied or that a teacher didn’t like him, and I kept him out of school. I always believed Marshall, no questions asked. He seemed truly happy only when he was at home, drawing cartoon characters, reading comic books, or writing poems. Then, as soon as school was over for the day, his stomachache or whatever it was would miraculously disappear, and he’d want to go outside to play football or basketball. I called it playing possum, after the marsupial that pretends to be dead when fearing danger.

  I watched Marshall constantly. I’d been overprotective before the attack, and now I became worse. I’d nearly lost him once. He wasn’t going to be beaten again. Marshall was always great at wrapping me around his little finger—he knew exactly how to play to me. So, of course, when he was upset at school, I sided with him. Every time he was bullied, I moved him. I never questioned him. I just wanted him to feel safe after what had happened to him. It’s fair to say he attended at least twenty different schools. I only wanted my son to know I would do anything to protect and please him, and allay his fears. The ghost of DeAngelo Bailey remained. It took Marshall a long time to get over his fear of kids who resembled him. The doctor said it was post-traumatic stress. Like Vietnam War veterans, he had flashbacks. Every time he saw someone who resembled Bailey, he panicked.

  In the car, he would slide down the seat or even try to open the door and run if he thought he saw Bailey. I’d quickly pull over, grab him, and do everything I could to calm him down. Afterward he would remember nothing of it, as though he’d had a blackout.

  Once he was walking along a low wall with his arms held out wide. A bigger kid came towards him, doing the same thing. Marshall tumbled off the wall, screaming.

  “Mom, Mom, he’s going to get me,” he sobbed.

  The other boy was upset, too. He couldn’t understand what had happened—he was just being friendly. But Marshall was hysterical, hyperventilating, gasping for breath.

  As I cradled my son in my arms, I told him, “This awful thing happened to you, but God doesn’t want you to be frightened of black people. It could have been a white person, or a yellow or green one, who did this to you.”

  I aske
d him if he’d like to go back to play with the boy, but he shook his head. I could see his fear. He wasn’t ready to do that yet.

  The panic attacks continued. Every time a bigger kid who bore a passing resemblance to DeAngelo Bailey approached, Marshall froze. Then the tears would start to fall.

  I sought out children his own age and invited them to come over to make sure he had lots of different friends. I don’t believe there is such a thing as a good or a bad child, only good or bad behavior. I told Marshall all races had good people and some badly behaved people like DeAngelo Bailey. Gradually, his fears subsided.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Fred and I got back together. Even though he had taken off when I needed him most, I forgave him. Nursing an injured child was hard enough for me, let alone Fred.

  Fred agreed to attend Alcoholics Anonymous. I hoped he would learn why I got upset if anyone drank around Marshall. I was well aware that addiction was a disease that ran through my family.

  I’d tried alcohol just once. It was Christmas Eve 1975, not long after I’d divorced Bruce. Todd was upset because our hard-drinking stepfather had refused his gift of whiskey. So he and I sat on the bathroom floor drinking it. I spat the first mouthful out, but over the course of the next few hours we somehow finished the bottle. Then I puked. I missed Christmas Day totally. Marshall got to spend the night with his Uncle Ronnie, playing with their gifts that we’d opened the night before. I’ve never touched a drop of alcohol since. Unfortunately, the men I attract like to drink.

  In fairness, Fred did most of his drinking apart from me. He’d stop off for a couple martinis at his parents’ house on his way back from work. Or he’d take off to a bowling alley bar with friends. But it still bothered me, and getting him into AA was a step in the right direction.

  We also decided to move back to Missouri. Marshall was unhappy at first, but soon his Uncle Ronnie was once again his best friend. They came home all excited once because they’d cut their arms, merged their blood, and made a pact to be blood brothers. They were both crazy about hip-hop. Our home resounded to the sounds of LL Cool J and the Beastie Boys.

  One evening, just as it was getting dark, I was grilling hot dogs and hamburgers for supper when my half-sister Betti, two other women, and two guys stormed into my house. I was looking after my neighbor’s baby. They snatched her from my arms, tossed her onto some carpeting, then threw my food everywhere.

  Betti went for me. I was on my way inside when someone grabbed me and cracked me over the head with a beer bottle. They dragged me across the kitchen by my hair and yanked me back outside. I yelled, but Marshall, in his room with a couple of friends, had his Nintendo turned up loud.

  Betti screamed, “Bitch, you’re dead!” and I was dragged across the yard and onto the pavement beside the house.

  She jumped on my chest and pummeled me, while the girls held me down. Even the guys joined in, kicking me with their cowboy boots. Then they tried to drag me into their car. I remember kicking out, screaming as loud as I could.

  An old man, turning into our road in his car, saw in the light from his headlights what was going on. He fired a shotgun in the air to frighten them off. They ran and jumped in their car and backed up the hill. I thought they were going to try to run me over, but instead they sped off.

  Marshall appeared as the car roared off. He picked up a handful of rocks and yelled, “Leave my mom alone!”

  The man helped me into the house. I’d lost one of my sandals. My hair was in knots from the blood streaming down the back of my head. My white blouse had turned brown-red.

  As I went to dial 911 for the police, the phone rang. It was my mother.

  “Your daughter just beat me up,” I mumbled.

  “You mean she didn’t kill you,” she said. Mom was always making crazy accusations about me. Her previous partner was a city bus driver. I’d not long moved back to Saint Joe when he would sometimes pop in to see me. Out of courtesy I would offer him coffee. He still loved Mom, even though they’d split up. I think he hoped I could persuade her to get back with him. I told him to stay away from her. I said she was like a stuck record: it was the same old drama over and over again.

  The police arrived and told me to go to the hospital. I had a concussion, my nose was broken, I had a dislocated shoulder, three or four broken ribs, and gravel embedded in the gashes on my face, arms, and legs. I had also suffered a bad injury to my back, though I didn’t know it at the time.

  “You look like you’ve been run over by a train,” the doctor said.

  I was an absolute bloody mess. My hair had to be cut shorter because I couldn’t get a comb through the knots. Worse, I needed to wear a thick plastic brace around my torso, and I couldn’t even take a step forward without the aid of a walker. I had to learn how to walk again. One week I managed three steps, the next six. I was spending several days a week going to physical therapy; my lovely therapist, Chris Marsh, kept me feeling positive during what was a really hard time. Without his and my doctor’s support and encouragement, I don’t think I could have done it.

  The court prosecutors refused to take any action against my attackers. My sister claimed I’d invited them all over for a barbecue, then I’d suddenly lunged at them with a big grilling fork. They had apparently fought me off.

  Since childhood, I’d been accused of all sorts of things by Mom. On an earlier occasion she took off her earrings, rolled up her sleeves, and went for me. “You’re not too old for me to beat your ass,” she snarled—all because I was standing up for my brother Todd.

  Marshall and I had stopped by one evening after my beauty school. My mom, stepdad, and siblings were eating supper, and Marshall, too young to understand, jumped up to the table. Mom immediately got up, saying that it figured I’d stop by while they were eating. Todd had offered his sandwich to Marshall, but Mom yelled at him not to—so Todd headed up to his room, swiftly followed by my stepdad, who demanded he come back down. I ran over to the stairs and told him not to dare touch Todd—but by this time he was trying to pull my brother down the stairs.

  People who know my family are amazed at the way I turned out. By rights I should have been an alcoholic sitting on a barstool with my kids running wild outside on the streets. Instead, I fought to be the complete opposite of that.

  The last person I wanted to be like was my mom. The mother in a family is supposed to be the rock—mine was more like a piece of gravel. I don’t hate my mother because I believe it is a sin to hate. Despite everything, I still love her. But back then whatever I did was never good enough for her. I called her merely my birth mother because that was the only bit of mothering I recall she ever did for me.

  When I was growing up, Mom twice attempted suicide in front of me by swallowing handfuls of pills. Once, when I went to visit her in the hospital after yet another failed overdose, she punched me on the nose. There was no reason for all the craziness. But Mom thrived on it.

  Music was my escape. And then, to make up for Mom, I gave Marshall too much love.

  In the summer of 1985 I discovered I was pregnant. No one was more surprised than I was. A few years earlier I’d suffered an ectopic pregnancy—the baby had started to develop outside the womb in my left fallopian tube, which I then lost. The doctor warned me it was highly unlikely I’d ever conceive again. Now I was expecting—and ecstatic. Unfortunately, Fred and Marshall didn’t share my excitement.

  Marshall was twelve and still crazy about all things prehistoric. When I asked him if he preferred a little brother or a little sister he joked, “Why can’t we have a baby dinosaur?”

  Fred’s reaction was even stranger. He was almost forty, he loved kids, Marshall called him Dad, and this was going to be his first natural child. I was two months pregnant when his mother phoned to say she needed him back in Michigan because she was having eye surgery.

  I asked Fred not to leave. But he packed his bags regardless.

  “If you walk out the door, that’s it. Don’t come back,” I said.<
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  But he just smiled sweetly, kissed me on the head, and promised to return.

  Weeks went by and he didn’t come back. I phoned Samra’s Meat Market—his dad was always so lovely. He promised he’d get Fred to call. Then his mother would snatch up the phone and order me to stop calling. I heard through the grapevine that Fred was having an affair with a young girl called Tina. I phoned and phoned, but he would not return my calls. I was a total wreck. I couldn’t believe he had left me after almost seven years together.

  I was selling Avon cosmetics door to door but, as my pregnancy progressed, it became harder to walk up and down the hills around Saint Joseph. I was high-risk and was not allowed to do any lifting or many household chores. I hired a friend of Theresa’s family to do the chores in exchange for room and board. It worked out well for a time, as I could not have afforded to pay for help.

  Aside from his allowance, Marshall was determined to earn money too. He was crazy about breakd-ancing, so he made a big cardboard sign, announcing it cost twenty-five cents to watch. Then he got me to stand in the parking lot, with the sign around my neck, and hold a cup to collect the money. For some reason he would wear only white to break-dance. By the time he’d finished spinning on the ground he was filthy.

  For the second time in my life I was forced to go on welfare. I hated it but had no choice. Fred wouldn’t even talk to me, let alone send any money. Then, just when things couldn’t get any worse, they did.

  In the seventh month of my pregnancy I was talking to my brother Todd when a crazy man called Mike Harris appeared from nowhere. He grabbed me, pulled up my top, held a knife to my belly, and growled, “I’ll cut the baby out and hand it to you.”

  I saw his eyes—they were fiery. He was clearly high on drugs. My legs buckled underneath me. Todd beat him off and chased him down the street. Then, as I was gasping for air, he helped me back into my car.