My Son Marshall, My Son Eminem (20 page)

Then, on Nathan’s seventeenth birthday, I had an odd feeling all day that something was wrong. Call it a mother’s instinct. I was at the doctor’s having a series of tests—I was still suffering head pain from the 2001 car crash—when I just had a gut feeling that something bad was happening at home. I can’t explain how I knew, I just knew.

I abandoned my medical tests and rushed home. Nathan was nowhere to be found. I phoned everywhere, even Fraser Police. I thought he’d been kidnapped. With Marshall’s fame, along with his enemies in the rap world, I never knew what to expect. The police couldn’t do anything: at seventeen, Nathan was an adult.

Eventually, he was tracked down to the girl’s parents’ house. He’d decided to move in with them, after a lot of coaxing. This didn’t last long; Nathan soon returned home, but those few weeks seemed like an eternity to me.

I’d read all about empty-nest syndrome, but no one had prepared me for the shock of it. From 1972, when I was seventeen, my life had revolved around children. For thirty years I’d cared for and nurtured first Marshall, then Nathan, along with the kids I’d fostered and all their pals. Then, suddenly, nothing. I hated being alone in the house. The silence was unbearable. I was so used to the sound of both my sons. There’d always been a stereo or radio playing somewhere. Their friends had become my friends. They would still phone often, but that wasn’t enough.

I understood that Nathan wanted to grow up, to stand on his own two feet, but it was so hard for me. I did everything I could to keep myself busy, to make up for the emptiness I felt inside. I took in Joey, an old friend who’s partially sighted, and spent hours visiting other elderly people who needed help. I threw myself into renovating my home and did volunteer work for Amnesty International and Mothers Against Drunk Driving.

Nathan dated a lot of very pretty girls. I guess he wanted to see if they cared about him for who he was and not just because he had a famous brother. But I’m not sure why my sons seem to make such poor choices when it comes to women. When asked by
The Face
how many times he’d fallen in love, Marshall said, “Once. And that’s enough for me.”

I understand that Kim has a hold over him because of Hailie, but he has never made much of an effort to find anyone else. I don’t think he likes change. Kim has always loomed large in the background.

Six months after she gave birth to Eric Hartter’s daughter, Whitney, in 2002, Kim returned to Marshall. He took them both in, but it didn’t take long for the trouble to start again.

In the early hours of June 10, 2003, Kim was stopped by police for driving erratically. The officers found two bags of cocaine in her car and one on her. Marshall, who was on tour, flew back to Detroit by private jet to ask a judge for full custody of Hailie.

Then, in September, police raided a party she was throwing at Warren’s Candlewood Suites Hotel. She admitted her guests had taken ecstasy and marijuana and was charged with maintaining a drug house.

Warrants for her arrest were issued when she failed to show up in court on November 7. Five days later Marshall was awarded temporary full custody of Hailie.

Kim finally turned herself in on November 19. She faced a long jail sentence, but to my surprise she was asked to post only $53,000 bail. However, she was ordered to wear an electronic tag and go to alcohol-and drug-counseling sessions. The following month she struck a plea bargain with prosecutors and was given two years’ probation.

I received a verbal invitation from Nathan to Hailie’s eighth birthday party on Christmas Day. I was so excited. The party was at a roller-skating rink. Nathan warned me that Marshall had laid down some ground rules: I wasn’t to smother Hailie; I had to let her skate and play with her friends. I was more than happy to oblige and spent the next few days shopping for gifts. I bought her several Barbies, because she always loved them, and some baby dolls. But I felt as if people were sneering at the presents I’d given her. She had so many gifts, each one bigger and more elaborate, that she seemed overwhelmed.

But she was so pleased to see me that she kept breaking away from her friends to come over and talk to me.

Marshall kept staring at me. I hoped he’d break the ice by coming over to chat. When it became apparent he wasn’t going to, I made my way to his table and asked how he was.

“Fine,” he replied.

That was it. He wouldn’t even look me in the eye. He was like a mime puppet, straight-faced, motionless. I felt so awkward in front of him. He was my son, someone I loved so much it hurt. We’d always talked

about everything. Now he sat in front of me with a frozen, hard expression. I had walked away and found a bench to sit on when a lady came over to introduce herself. She was one of Marshall’s neighbors on the Manchester Estates. She was curious as to why my son was behaving like a puppet, even toward his managers. I couldn’t answer that.

I knew I’d cry if anything else happened, so I went over to Hailie to say goodbye.

“I love you, Fuss Bucket,” I said, giving her a big cuddle. She giggled, but Marshall cut in.

“Don’t call her that,” he snapped. “She’s not a baby.”

Then he handed me an envelope and told me not to open it until I was outside.

The moment I got to my car I tore it open. Inside was $500 and a Christmas card with a reindeer on the front that read, “Debbie—love, your son Marshall, Nathan, Hailie, Alaina, and Kim.”

That was it. I was no longer Mom: I was merely Debbie. I sat in the car, watching them all leave the rink with presents and balloons. Then I drove home, crying all the way.

I was driving back from a friend’s on January 22,

2004, when I stopped at a gas station at the junction of

8 Mile and Coolidge Road to fill up my Honda Accord. It was just after 11 p.m., the cashier had dimmed the lights, and I had to try several times before I could get my credit card to work. I paid in advance and started to fill the car up. I left the nozzle pumping into my tank, then sat back in the driver’s seat to make a note of my mileage.

Suddenly there was a clunk that sounded like the nozzle falling then a guy shoved his arm through my window. He put a gun in my face.

“Get the fuck out!” he growled.

I couldn’t believe what was happening. It was all in slow motion, like a movie.

“But you’re just a kid,” I said, stunned by his youth.

The kid had chipmunk cheeks; he was babyfaced. But his eyes were glassy.

“Bitch, I’m not playing,” he snarled.

I shook as I tried to grab my purse. Papers fell everywhere, all over the floor. Weird thoughts went through my mind: aside from the money—I had $3,573 on me in cash and an emergency hundred-dollar bill in a secret compartment of my wallet—I didn’t want him to get every last stitch of my personal ID accumulated over my life. These included many old driver’s licenses, my boys’ first paper licenses, their birth bands, many pictures and letters, my identity papers, and even articles I had gathered for my book. Most of it was in my large purse, which was so full I couldn’t even close it. My life flashed in front of me. I thought, My God, I didn’t get to talk to my sons. Marshall will never believe this. What am I going to do if I get shot? It was like being in the middle of a bad dream that seemed to go on forever, although in reality it all happened in seconds.

My beloved dog Itchy, a Labrador mix, was also in the car. I grabbed his leash. The kid finally yanked me from the car, grabbing my hair and vigorously shaking my head back and forth before throwing me onto the ground beside the pumps. Itchy landed on top of me, and I nervously wrapped his leash around my coat. He pressed the gun—a small silver .45 pistol—to the dog. I screamed “No, not the dog!” and, with his nerves showing, he put the gun back on me while mumbling something about his daddy being in Jackson and he wanted to be there with him. Then he started repeating “Goodbye, bitch.”

“Please, please, no!” I cried.

“Bitch, I don’t play games,” he snarled. “I’m going to kill you. Say goodbye.”

He clicked the gun. Nothing happened. He hit the bottom of the gun with his hand, swearing and cursing. He told me to get up and run backwards. I managed to get on my feet but immediately felt as if I was going to collapse. Once again he came back at me with the gun, telling me to say goodbye. But then he ran, jumping into my car. There was a squeal of tires and the kid took off in my car with all of my things. The cashier was hovering inside. I went running in. but he ordered me to take the dog and get out. I begged him to call the police. He put the phone in the opening of the bulletproof window; then, as I went to take it, he grabbed it away and instead pushed me out of the door. I’d thought he was calling the police when I was being held up, but he only did it after I hobbled to a pay phone to call them myself.

I’m not sure what I said, but I remember screaming over and over at the operator that I’d been robbed. On 911, the call operator lady kept saying she couldn’t understand me, so I screamed into the phone that I was Eminem’s mom. I believe all they heard was “Eminem.” I spoke to bystanders who said they’d chased the kid and that police were only a block away. Slowly the police came up the block and pulled in, and suddenly there were helicopters overhead. Over the crackle of radios I heard someone say Eminem had been carjacked, that they had the kid in custody, and that the car and the purse were recovered. When they discovered it was me who’d been robbed, not my son, they were dismissive.

They took me off to the nearest police station in Oak Park, sat me down, and treated me like I was the criminal. I just sat there in my imitation-poodle coat, clutching Itchy’s leash and crying. They asked if I wanted to phone Marshall—I suppose they wanted their own fifteen minutes of fame, too. I shook my head. It hadn’t taken them long to pick up a suspect. The kid was two and a half miles away. He jumped out of my car and was running through someone’s backyard when the police grabbed him after bystanders blocked him in. He refused to talk, saying he wanted his mom and lawyer there. My purse, with all my money, identity papers, and photos of my kids, was gone. I was told by police officers that if I calmed down they would bring me my purse. They then took turns coming into and out of the room, but all of a sudden everyone was gone. When I made repeated requests for information, I was ignored by the officers, who appeared to be quarreling with each other. Eventually one officer came in, shut the door behind him, and told me there was no purse. I was really upset by now and felt doubly angry that I wasn’t being listened to, nor was I given back my personal possessions there and then. I was sick of the whole thing. While being driven back to the police department after the incident, in shock and tightly clutching Itchy’s leash, all I could say was I couldn’t believe how babyfaced the suspect kid looked. The police made a note of my observation. It didn’t take long for the media to hear about the carjacking, either. By the next morning I was making headlines all over the world. My phone rang off the hook with friends and relatives calling to make sure I was okay. The only person who didn’t seem to know about it was Marshall. I tried to play that down, telling the local media that he “apparently must not be in town.” It was weeks before Marshall acknowledged that anything had happened. I heard him in the background one day when I was on the phone to Nathan, poking fun at me, saying, “It had to happen on 8 Mile, didn’t it?” I got the impression he didn’t believe I’d been attacked. A close friend of mine made a few inquiries. He said my assailant was a crazy guy who’d bragged about robbing Eminem’s mom. The kid claimed he didn’t realize it was me until he got up close; then he recognized me from the TV. Who’s to say what really happened here?

In fairness to Marshall, he did have other things on his mind. In February, Kim was sent to jail. She’d failed a urine test and admitted to her probation officer that she’d used cocaine. I can’t say I felt much sympathy for her. She never would toe the line, acting as though she could do anything she pleased. Marshall often joked that if Kim fell into a heap of manure she’d come up smelling of roses. She served less than a month in jail. Yet still she didn’t learn anything. She received another 140 days jail time in July after dropping out of her court-ordered drug-treatment program.

I’d joined Amnesty International after seeing how my brother Todd was treated in prison. He came out a broken man. But I wanted James Knott, the sixteen-year-old arrested for robbing me, to be punished for the carjacking as well. I lost a big part of me that night.

I wasn’t even sure that the prosecutors had the right guy. I remember my attacker being around five-foot-nine and 150 pounds. Knott was more like five-foot-two and ninety-eight pounds. But I was told he’d admitted to it.

In April, the judge ruled that Knott, who was tried as an adult, had to go to prison for such a serious offense. He pleaded guilty to carjacking and robbery, was sentenced to four years in jail, and was ordered to pay me $3,573 compensation. Needless to say, he never gave me a penny.

My poor dog Itchy suffered more psychologically than I did. To this day he freaks out if we stop at a gas station. I’m just ultra-careful now. I try to avoid those places if it’s late. Itchy landed on me when he was flung from the car and, although I didn’t know it then, I broke a bone in my foot. But by May I had more serious health issues. I’d found a walnut-size lump in my breast. The doctors believed it was cancerous.

By then I was really struggling financially. I had no health insurance and I had to pay cash upfront for a mammogram. Then I was told to regain my strength before surgery. I’d lost ten pounds. My weight was hovering around eighty-four pounds. I reacted by going into denial.

Word obviously got back to Marshall. There had been stories all over his fan sites that I was dying. Out of the blue, he called.

“How are you?” he asked. He sounded genuinely concerned.

“I’m okay, son,” was all I managed. I didn’t want to burden him with my problems. I tried to switch the subject to other things, such as Hailie, but he asked me to fax my medical papers to his management company. He offered to pay my health insurance. I told him I didn’t want his money, but he insisted I send them over. What I would really have liked was the chance for a face-to-face meeting with Marshall. I wanted to sit down with him and talk, the way we used to before he was famous. It wasn’t to be, but at least he’d called. My brother Todd was my rock throughout many of the ordeals I’d been through. As far as I was concerned, he’d saved my life when I was pregnant with Nathan, and chased off the crazy knifeman Mike Harris, the guy who had attacked me when I was pregnant. He’d also kept me sane during the worst times of my life, making me laugh, always supporting me. Todd was a father figure to my sons, helping both of them whenever they needed it.