My Son Marshall, My Son Eminem (19 page)

Dad and Geri were invited to Nate’s birthday party. I was very upset, as they only seemed to come in order to get photos with Marshall. I felt that he was never accepted by them until he became famous, and they completely forgot about Nathan. I spent most of the evening trying to stop everyone buying alcohol for Nathan, who was performing on stage. Then, just before Marshall arrived, he sent his people in to scope the place out. I’d told the BBC film crew they couldn’t film, and it angered them, but I was not about to jeopardize Nathan’s sixteenth birthday party for the world. Everyone else was ordered not to take pictures or video too. There was no way I wanted Marshall upset—this would be his first appearance in my presence since I had attended his court case ten months before.

Marshall swooped in and immediately accused me of taking photos of him. Of course, I had a camera. It was Nathan’s birthday. But I hadn’t taken any of Marshall, except the ones he approved of with my dad and him. He cursed me, as he had everyone’s attention by then. I wanted to die. I would never do anything to harm him with pictures.

“I told you to fucking stop taking pictures!” he shouted.

“I’m not taking photos,” I said.

“Give me the fucking camera!” he yelled.

Box, Marshall’s bodyguard, tried to calm him down. But I ended up in tears as Marshall stormed off. It was so unfair. This was Nathan’s big sixteenth birthday, and it was ruined. I retreated into the ladies’ room to collect myself.

Marshall was under tremendous stress, although I didn’t know why at the time. It turned out that the release date for his new album,
The Eminem Show
, kept getting put back as he worked on it, as well as the soundtrack for
8 Mile
.

The movie itself had wrapped; reaction in Detroit and Warren was mixed. The worst bit of downtown Detroit is a ghost town of boarded-up buildings, weed-infested lots, and barbed wire. The eerie silence is broken only by gunfire and police sirens. In 1996 the city earned the dubious title of “world’s least appealing travel destination.” Not much had changed since then. The population continued to plummet as the crime rates rose. The suburbs had sprawled as far as Flint, some sixty miles away, and as in every city in America, there were good and bad areas.

Naturally, Marshall’s Michigan fans loved it that Hollywood’s spotlight had fallen on Detroit. The movie production had helped the local economy. Some people hoped that it might revitalize downtown. Others fumed that
8 Mile
would do nothing to improve outsiders’ views of the once majestic motor city.

Marshall responded to his critics in an interview with
The Face
, saying, “The fucking white-trash capital of the world. I’m white trash, so what the fuck? You can’t tell me. I grew up in it.”

He’d made a few comments about me too, saying most mothers would be happy to have Kim Basinger playing them, but that I was bitching about it.

“Anyone else would probably take that as a compliment. But I don’t think my mother will,” he told
Blender
magazine.

He never asked my opinion. If he had, I’d have told him I was delighted that Kim was playing me. I think she’s a wonderful actress, as well as being really pretty.

Marshall insisted the film was fiction. He was playing a makebelieve character called Jimmy Smith. In fact, there’s a disclaimer at the end of the movie saying that. Yet most people assume it’s his life story.

Marshall had warned me I’d learn just how bad he could be in our final conversation after we’d settled the Fred Gibson case. He was as good as his word. “Without Me,” the first single from
The Eminem Show
, went straight for the jugular. He used his “Fuck you, Debbie” line. It broke my heart when I heard it. He no longer called me Mom. I was Fuckin’ Debbie.

Lynn Cheney, the vice president’s wife, Limp Bizkit, and Moby were also parodied. The song went straight into the Billboard charts at number two.

The accompanying video had Marshall playing Batman and Robin—just as he’d done as a child, charging alone around the house in interchanging capes. It costarred Nathan as young Marshall. Then Marshall himself donned a big blond wig and appeared to be mimicking me on a Jerry Springer–style TV show. By the time the scene switched to Marshall dressed as Osama bin Laden, I couldn’t see for the tears streaming from my eyes.

“Cleanin’ Out My Closet (I’m Sorry Mama)” seemed—at first—to be Marshall’s way of apologizing to me. In the chorus he said he’d never meant to hurt me. Then in the second verse he turned on his father. So far, so good. But Marshall had saved the worst lines until last. He told of watching me taking pills, claimed he was a victim of Munchausen syndrome by proxy, and was made to believe he was ill when he wasn’t. He goaded me about making my own CD, said Nathan would soon realize I was a phony, and that I would not be allowed to see Hailie grow up.

He ended with the lines that he hoped I’d burn in hell because, when Ronnie had died, I’d said I wished it were him instead. Now, according to Marshall, he was dead to me.

In the heat of the moment—when I’d just buried Ronnie, and Kim had gotten rid of my furniture—I had said I wished Marshall were dead. But I’d apologized immediately and probably hundreds of times since. I’d been so upset over my little brother’s death, and Kim had wound me up. The words just tumbled out of my mouth. I thought Marshall had accepted that I didn’t mean it. But here he was, ten years later, throwing it back in my face, telling the world what I’d done.

I bought
The Eminem Show
because I always try to support everything Marshall does, but I drew the line at attending screenings for
8 Mile
. I knew I could not sit through it. Even so, I was so proud of him in November 2002, when he became the first artist ever to top the movie, album, and singles charts at the same time. He added another string to his bow at the 2003 Academy Awards when “Lose Yourself” became the first rap song to win a music Oscar.

By the end of 2003—just four short years into his career—Marshall had racked up seven Grammy awards, two MTV movie awards for
8 Mile
, nine MTV music awards, and eight MTV Europe music awards. He’d also made the
Guinness Book of Records
as the fastest-selling rap artist ever. He’d sold forty million albums worldwide, and “Lose Yourself” was his most successful single, spending twelve weeks at the top of the American chart.

When he was first nominated for a Grammy in 2000, he didn’t even bother attending the ceremony, assuming he wouldn’t win. He felt the same about the Oscars, declined an invitation to perform “Lose Yourself,” and later said he was fast asleep when the show went out on live TV.

8 Mile
opened to great acclaim. The
Los Angeles Daily News
awarded it three and a half stars, saying, “It’s a great bet, and director Curtis Hanson (
LA Confidential
) is smart enough to use Eminem’s ferocious wit and charisma to create a wildly entertaining movie that stands as the hip-hop generation’s very own
Saturday Night Fever
.
8 Mile
isn’t exactly autobiographical.... So the movie both hews to the facts of Eminem’s life—the rags-to-riches story, the contentious relationship with his mother (played here by Kim Basinger), the brutal, funny, and outrageous one-on-one rap battles where he honed his craft—and aims to do repair work on his media image.”

Of course, all the reviews mentioned Basinger’s portrayal of the mother as a hard-drinking deadbeat with a lover young enough to be her son. It didn’t matter that Universal was at pains to point out that the story was fiction—everyone assumed her part was based on me.

I knew I wouldn’t be able to see the film in a public cinema, as I knew I’d get too upset, so I waited until it came out on DVD. I’ve tried to watch it, but every time I put it on, it makes me sick. I’d never seen it all the way through, just bits and pieces, until the summer of 2007. Everyone kept telling me I should watch it because it was fiction and not real life. I was still upset, but I managed to watch to the end.

The Basinger character comes on to her own son and his friends. That is just sick. She’s addicted to alcohol and bingo, her trailer is an absolute pigsty. Now, I don’t drink. And I’m compulsive when it comes to keeping my house clean. People tease me for straightening out cushions the moment someone stands up, or emptying ashtrays the second someone puts out a cigarette. Kim’s family lived just off 8 Mile, for most of their lives, as I’m told. Marshall and I only once briefly had a home in Detroit just off 8 Mile, when I bought our first house on Dresden, on the Detroit-Warren border.

8 Mile
renewed interest in me. Once again, newspaper and magazine articles appeared saying that I never worked, that I pretended things had happened to me in shops so I could sue. I have never sued Wal-Mart, the dollar stores, or any other retail establishment for that matter. I have heard that other members of my large, extended family have done that, but definitely not me.

I did try to take legal action against Dort Elementary School after Marshall was bullied by DeAngelo Bailey. The staff had done nothing to protect him. And his medical bills were enormous, so of course I wanted those paid. But the judge ruled that schools were immune from lawsuits. I took it all the way to Lansing, the state capital, and I know my battle at least helped get things changed. I’d gathered petitions at school gates, because most parents were unaware that schools would not guarantee children wouldn’t be harmed. As we saw earlier, after my fight schools took out insurance policies for parents to buy. Marshall was recovering from that beating when he got food poisoning from a hot dog. He ended up in the hospital on an IV drip. I took the remaining sausages to the hospital technicians for testing. Sure enough, they were bad. I called the store manager to get him to pull the brand from the shelves. He offered me a free case of hot dogs. I declined. Marshall and I did not want to ever see a hot dog again after he’d been so ill. Then we were offered $1,500, which of course I took. I needed it to cover the medical bills. But Marshall demanded that the money should go to him. In the end I gave him two or three hundred dollars—I forget how much exactly—and the rest went toward our bills.

Aside from the Fred Gibson lawsuit against Marshall, there were only two other occasions when I sued someone. Again, it was just after Marshall had been hurt at Dort Elementary. I was doing some modeling to make money and my mane of long blonde hair was my image. I went to get a trim, but the stylist for some reason took an instant disliking to me. She was heavy-set and demanded to know if I’d always been skinny. Then she hacked my hair off. Before I could stop her, I had a short back and sides and a Cleopatra fringe. Then she laughed in my face, saying she’d only done as I asked. There was a place that bought hair to make wigs for kids with cancer. I guess she planned on selling it there. I was so upset that I did take her to court. I did not want her doing it to anyone else. The judge awarded me $1,500.

Then I went to a dentist for root-canal surgery. I’d never had major work done on my mouth before, so I did not know what to expect. When I came around from the anesthetic, a nurse was stitching up my gum. She told me to bite on a tea bag when I got home to stem the bleeding and gave me a prescription for sleeping medication. I was in agony—I couldn’t stand up and I practically crawled out of the surgery. Back at home I couldn’t understand why my mouth felt so odd, as if something were missing. The dentist had pulled four of my teeth on the upper right side.

I had to have expensive oral surgery to sort out that mess. The dentist was eventually found liable for twenty-seven counts of malpractice. My tooth extraction was the bottom of the pile, but I eventually got $1,500. Again, it did not cover the medical bills I had to pay to correct the painful mistakes he’d made.

By the time
8 Mile
came out I was suffering a very different type of pain: empty-nest syndrome. Marshall never left home. He was twenty-six with his own child when I left him to marry John Briggs. Nathan was a different kettle of fish. His childhood was much harder than Marshall’s. I’d brought him up singlehanded. He’d never enjoyed the holidays in Florida, Canada, or Tennessee that we’d had with his father, Fred. Nathan never understood why Fred had been so good to Marshall but didn’t want to know him. I couldn’t explain it to him either. I too was hurt that Fred had abandoned us. Then I lost Nathan for sixteen months to foster parents. And when he was fourteen, his big brother had exploded onto the rap scene, making him grow up fast.

Nathan went on tour with Marshall, but it was hard for him to make genuine friends. He never knew whether someone liked him for real or just wanted to get close to Marshall. He was also working on his own rap act but worried constantly that people compared him unfavorably to his brother.

Marshall used to protect Nathan from bullies, but once he was on probation he couldn’t do that because he could not risk getting into trouble again. Nate befriended one young man who protected him for a while. But then he started to steal things from Nathan, such as his shoes and a camcorder. When a Rolex that Marshall had given him went missing, Nate vowed to stick with the two pals he’d been close to since before Marshall was famous. He felt they were the only people he could really trust.

It didn’t help that Marshall and I were no longer speaking. But Nathan acted as the go-between, keeping the lines of communication open.

I did everything I could to make Nathan happy. I bought a house in Fraser, a small Macomb County community fifteen miles from downtown Detroit, and converted the basement into Nathan’s quarters. Aside from his bedroom, there was a pool table down there, a big-screen TV, and his own phone, so that he’d feel as if it were his own separate apartment.

He was crazy about a girl, a model who was two years older than he was. She was incredibly pretty, with exotic dark Italian coloring that matched Nathan’s olive complexion. They made a cute couple, and I was happy for her to hang out in Nathan’s basement.