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

by Nelson, Debbie

  The doctor sent me to the hospital, ordering me to stay there for the remainder of my pregnancy. The baby’s food supply had somehow got cut off and he wasn’t growing properly. It was the shock of the knife attack.

  A friend cared for Marshall while I lay on my side in a nondescript hospital room for two long months, hoping and praying that my baby would grow and be healthy.

  The six high-risk specialists gathered around my hospital bed preparing me for the worst—there was a chance my baby would need to be rushed off to another hospital for heart surgery. Thank God he was okay.

  Nathan Kane came screaming into the world on February 3, 1986. He had jaundice and colic, and he would not stop crying. He was considered premature.

  Marshall was not impressed.

  “Send him back,” he ordered. Then as a joke he added, “I want a baby dinosaur, not him.”

  A couple of the neighbors said that at thirteen Marshall was too old to be obsessed with dinosaurs. I ignored them. The women said the same thing when Marshall did his drumbeats or would break-dance over and over. They’d try to say he was retarded. He wasn’t retarded; he was making music. And he’d won a poetry competition at school. His verse was displayed in the local shopping mall. I dismissed the other mothers’ words as jealousy.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Flushed by his poetry success, Marshall now knew exactly what he wanted to do for a living. He idolized LL Cool J and wanted to be a hip-hop artist. His peers laughed at him, but I told him he could achieve anything he wanted in life.

  He scribbled lyrics over napkins, scraps of paper, even grocery-store receipts, and he woke me up constantly in the middle of the night to ask what words meant. I bought him a dictionary. He pored over it, memorizing unusual words and meanings.

  Marshall worried constantly about the state of the world—he hated wars, famines, and poverty. He was all for peace and prosperity; his lyrics reflected those things.

  He also had drawing books full of cartoon characters he’d created. He never mentioned his father, but once when I couldn’t get to his school’s parents’ evening, he left me a drawing of himself sitting alone on the porch. It was his way of saying he was upset. When he was happy, he made me pictures of butterflies, knowing I loved them.

  I got annoyed when his teachers gave him C grades for art. His drawings were so good they accused him of copying. But he did well in music, often getting a B grade. I had Marshall prove to one of his teachers that he really could draw. They still had a hard time believing it.

  He and Ronnie had silly quarrels over pop. Ronnie moved away from hip-hop and was into Bon Jovi, rock, and heavy metal. So Marshall honed his rapping skills on Todd and Nan. And, despite his initial reservations, he soon fell in love with his baby brother. He cradled Nathan to sleep, gave him his bottle, and mothered him to pieces.

  Nathan’s front four baby teeth had to be pulled after he contracted a rare bacterial infection. It was heartbreaking—he was only two and a half years old and had beautiful white teeth. His adult teeth didn’t grow until he was nearly eight. Until the age of three, he refused to be parted from his bottle, sucking on it even when it was empty. I tried throwing it away, but somehow he always managed to retrieve it.

  Fred called once: he wanted to come back. But I couldn’t forgive him again. He’d left me pregnant and barefoot in the kitchen. Then his mother begged me to take him back—she didn’t like his girlfriend, Tina. I told her he’d made his bed and he could lie in it. There was also the issue of child support. He’d declared bankruptcy to avoid paying my hospital bills when I was pregnant. He didn’t pay a penny until 1995. Even then he claimed hardships to the court, and I couldn’t count on the money, which was thirty-five dollars every two weeks and only ever came off and on. Fred continually asked for his rights to his son to be severed, which I refused, as he had gotten off lightly as it was. But he did start paying maintenance right before Nathan’s sixteenth birthday.

  Thank God my doctor had given me something to calm my nerves—I don’t think I could have got through the many trials and tribulations without some help. I’ll never forget Dr. B. telling baby Nathan, “Listen, little man, when you’re grown up, if you see your dad, give him a good punch on the nose for me.”

  Marshall loved our duplex apartment in Savannah. It was brand-new, and he had the entire top floor to himself. But just like Marshall after he was beaten by DeAngelo Bailey, I remained scared that the crazy man who’d attacked me when I was pregnant would return.

  It was time to return to Michigan, but Marshall did not want to go. He threatened to run away, begged me to let him stay behind and get a job—anything to stay in Missouri. Even though he loved Nathan, he still had flashes of jealousy. He accused me of ignoring him and giving Nate too much attention. Threatening to run away was his way of fighting back. I insisted he was too young to live on his own, and asked how he was going to earn a living.

  “I’ll get a job in a factory or on a farm,” he said. I knew he wasn’t serious—he was just rebelling.

  It was a tough few weeks, but eventually Marshall came around. Once we were back in Michigan, he soon reconnected with his old friends and started to make new ones.

  Our house was always full of kids. I joined Parents Without Partners, a group for the divorced and separated that encouraged families to get to know each other. There were picnics, lake beach parties, and barbecues.

  I soon fell for a landscape gardener called B. J. He had several kids but saw them only rarely. I noticed how good B. J. was around my boys. They were both frightened of water, and neither really wanted to learn how to swim. But B. J. encouraged Nathan to splash about in the lake, wading out with him hand in hand. I was very strict about the men in my life—my kids were everything—and I gauged how they treated my boys and their pets. And, of course, they had to be sober. B. J. passed every test at the time.

  B. J. had been badly hurt by his last wife, but that didn’t stop him from proposing to me after just three months. Marshall was fifteen, and I valued his opinion when it came to the men in my life. He told me to go for it.

  We were married by B. J.’s minister. He was a big, surly man who asked if I was sure I wanted to go through with it. I thought that was a bit odd. He did the ceremony in a small office. I wore a long pink satin dress. B. J. had on a suit and tie.

  But there was something preying on Marshall’s mind when we got home that night.

  “Where’s he sleeping?” he asked, glaring at B. J.

  “My room,” I said.

  “Oh, no, he’s not!” Marshall screamed. “He can sleep outside in his truck.”

  With that, Marshall ordered B. J. outside. He stood glowering in front of the door. I pleaded with Marshall not to be silly. “We’re married,” I said.

  Marshall stormed off to his bedroom.

  B. J. spent our wedding night in his truck. I remained inside. The overprotective mother now had an overprotective son.

  Marshall had a violent temper. He’d pushed me a few times. He also threatened men he thought were admiring me. Sometimes at traffic lights, he’d roll down the car window and shout at unsuspecting male drivers, “What are you looking at? She’s my mom.”

  His father had been insanely jealous, too, constantly accusing me of having affairs. At the time I thought it was ironic that the cheating Bruce lashed out at me for perceived adultery. But now Marshall was exhibiting the same jealous streak. We talked throughout my wedding night. He finally let B. J. back into the house the following day.

  B. J. was strict, but I told him there was no way he was going to discipline my kids. I refused to let him raise his voice to Marshall or Nathan. Meanwhile, I smothered him with love. He’d had such an awful first marriage that I wanted him to know I truly cared about him.

  We’d been married only three months when B. J. started to act oddly. I invited his children over for Christmas, but as we drove them home, he began driving erratically. I wasn’t sure what was happening, but it took more tha
n an hour to calm him down. Even his kids pleaded with him to slow down, but that just made him drive faster. They were as frightened as I was.

  A few days later, he insisted on checking my car. He was outside with his tools for ages before he’d let me drive off. I got halfway down the road and a wheel fell off. He’d loosened all my wheels. It was winter, there was snow on the ground, and I thank God I was in a turning lane on a quiet road, and almost at a stop. On another occasion I woke up with a shadow looming over me—B. J. was wielding a tree saw over me. I screamed and Marshall came flying into the room.

  “What the fuck is going on here?” he shouted, as B. J. backed off. He’d hidden the saw beside the couch.

  I had no idea what was going on, but I was starting to get very worried about the man I’d just married.

  Then one afternoon he came charging into the house like a crazed maniac. He screamed that he wanted to talk, but his eyes were big and glassy. He looked like a wild animal. I tried to run into the kitchen, but he dragged me by the hair and started hitting my head against the fridge, followed by a couple of slaps to my face. Nathan was hollering B. J.’s name outside in the sandbox. I begged B. J. to stop. He heard Nathan and paused for a second before going outside. I grabbed the phone and called 911.

  The police found B. J. in the sandbox with a shovel, playing with Nathan and our chow dog, Teddy Bear. He was acting like a little kid. Then he spat in my face as the police led him back through the house and out the front door.

  Nathan was too young to understand, but Marshall was furious. I wanted to die when he asked how I had got the marks on my face.

  B. J. was locked up by order of court in a psychiatric hospital. He’d apparently suffered a massive nervous breakdown. The doctors thought that he’d had such an awful time during his first marriage that he’d finally cracked when he met someone who truly cared for him. He couldn’t believe that someone so nice, with a lovely home and children, could love him. It didn’t make a lot of sense to me. I was now terrified of him. I got a restraining order to stop him coming near me, then I started divorce proceedings.

  The marriage had lasted exactly three months. But B. J. didn’t go away easily. He was on the phone so often that no one else could ever get through. Once, Marshall snatched up the phone and told him, “Punk, get over here so I can beat your ass. I’ll fight you.”

  I was working as a home healthcare assistant, but I found it hard not to get overattached to my patients. Many were handicapped or crippled; they struggled to get in and out of regular vans. I decided to become a limo driver. I knew the senior citizens would prefer to have me driving them than the men who usually took them around. It was the perfect job. Nathan rode up front with me, and soon I had customers requesting only me. I chatted to businessmen on the way to the airport and realized I could undercut my competition.

  It was time to go it alone. I bought a 1977 white Cadillac with a plush burgundy interior for $1,600, called my company Classic Rides Ltd Transportation Service, and got myself several smart suits. The business took off. Within the year I had two more vehicles, one I’d bought from the county treasurer of Warren, whom I’d met when I worked for the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act (CETA) program. I bought a 1979 Lincoln Town Car, and then a 1985 Cadillac Fleetwood Brougham. I did most of the driving myself.

  Eventually I hired Don, a lovely senior man, and another driver who didn’t work out. I had a lot of work doing the driving, as well as all the paperwork, billing, answering the phones, and so on. I joined the National Association for Female Executives and many other organizations. I was so proud; I’d finally found the perfect career. Although exhausting, I loved my new career.

  I’d already decided it was about time we owned a home. Until then, I’d always rented. The house was at 19946 Dresden Street, on the Detroit side of 8 Mile. The down payment was $3,000. I saved as much as I could to buy the house on a land contract from a lovely senior couple, the Kovaleskis. When we eventually moved after five years, we stayed in touch.

  Years later Marshall claimed that “some dude” had bought me that house. That’s simply not true. I paid for it all myself and Marshall loved it so much that he had a model of it made to take on tour with him. Even though we’d moved a lot, he always said the house on Dresden was his childhood home.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Marshall arrived home from school with a tall, sulky blonde girl. He introduced her as Kim Scott and said she needed a place to stay. I was happy to help out.

  Kim said she was fifteen, and I had no reason to doubt that. In truth, she was so cute and busty that she could have passed for seventeen.

  At first she barely spoke. Questions were answered with a shake of the head. I pampered her, lending her my clothes, showing her how to put on make-up. I treated her like the daughter I’d always wanted.

  Gradually, she started to open up. She had a twin sister called Dawn, had no idea who their real father was, and claimed to have been sexually abused by her stepfather. Now, as often happens with troubled children, Kim told some pretty tall tales. She’d been raped, forced to sleep with relatives on a regular basis, beaten by her mother. You name it, it had happened to Kim. My job wasn’t to sort out fact from fiction; I simply listened and offered advice. I told her about my own similar experiences.

  If I asked her to empty the dishwasher or do the vacuuming she’d just say no and walk off.

  Communication wasn’t her strong point. I always picked up after Marshall. Now she was throwing her stuff on the floor and expecting me to clean up after her. I didn’t mind lending her my clothes if she asked first. But she just took them. She especially liked a lacy cream top and silk skirt I owned. I’m tiny, so the outfit was knee-length on me, but on Kim, who even then was almost six feet tall with large breasts, it looked positively obscene. She refused to give it back, claiming she had bought an identical one herself.

  Why did I put up with her? I’d been fostering kids for years. Our house was full of waifs and strays. I looked on Kim as a challenge, someone I hoped I could give a better life to. After all, I’d been through the mill with my own family. Even so, I didn’t trust her. Once she started to feel comfortable around me, she began to cause trouble.

  Marshall had the biggest bedroom. It ran the entire length of the upper floor, but he spent most of his time in the basement—which he’d converted into a makeshift recording studio—scratching records with his pals. After a couple of months, I noticed Kim was getting grouchy around his friends. She accused one of them of coming on to her.

  Marshall and I had always talked about everything. Nothing was taboo. Every evening we sat down together on the couch for a chat. Suddenly Kim started shoving herself in the middle of us. She was jealous of everyone, even Nathan.

  I guessed Marshall and Kim were now boyfriend and girlfriend but assumed the relationship would burn itself out. As a precaution, I made sure she was always tucked up on the couch outside my bedroom door every night. I did not want her sneaking upstairs to Marshall.

  On her sixteenth birthday, I made her a cake and we had a party. All hell broke out a few weeks later when the school phoned me to say Kim hadn’t been seen in months. I explained she was sixteen; I couldn’t make her attend classes.

  “She’s not sixteen; she’s just turned thirteen,” replied the cold voice on the other end of the phone. I felt sick. The moment Marshall walked in the door, I said, “We need to talk.”

  But he didn’t want to know. He insisted she was sixteen, claiming she was in the same year as he was at school.

  “Son, you’re fifteen. She’s much too young for you,” I said.

  Marshall hurled a stream of obscenities at me, then retreated into the basement. Kim returned a few hours later. When she saw my face, she ran to Marshall and then he followed her out of the front door.

  From that day on, chaos reigned.

  I did try to get on with Kim, but she hated me. Her parents hated Marshall. When I had the displeasure of bumping i
nto Kim’s mom at bingo, I would sometimes hear her yelling obscenities at the winners. Kim told me all sorts of sordid stories about her stepfather, Casey. I’m not sure I believe her, but I do know he frightened the life out of Marshall. When Casey found out my son didn’t like water, he persuaded him to go out on the lake with him in a tiny boat. Once they got away from the shore, Casey rocked it up and down, threatening to hurt him. Marshall said he’d also waved a gun at him. He was banned from even going onto their driveway.

  Kim flitted back and forth between our house on Dresden and her parents’ place, just off 8 Mile. There was always a drama: she claimed she’d been attacked by a crazed alcoholic pedophile; a gang of lads had jumped her in a store. She goaded Marshall into fights, ordering him to find the people who’d beaten her up. Once, Kim pointed to three burly guys in the street. Marshall confronted them; then she backtracked, saying maybe it wasn’t them. I was terrified someone would pull a gun on him.

  She goaded me, too. When she wasn’t stealing my clothes or breaking my stuff, she bragged about her sex life with Marshall. It was horrible. In later years she boasted how she’d sneaked upstairs in those first few months to sleep with my son.

  I really tried to talk to Kim. But she took absolutely no notice of me. Marshall, meanwhile, was devoted to her. She was his first girlfriend, and he was like a puppy dog around her. When she had surgery on her foot, he carried her around in his arms.

  When he got attacked by four guys, Kim told him, “Take it like a man.”

  I begged him to dump her. Marshall refused. It got to the point where I couldn’t even talk to him if she was in the house. We had to wait until she went out. Marshall’s friends, the other kids I fostered, and even little Nathan understood. They would discreetly disappear to the basement the moment Kim slammed out of the door, so that Marshall and I could have time together.

  “She’s my girl, you’re my mom. Please don’t make me choose,” he said many times.