My Son Marshall, My Son Eminem (4 page)

The next thing I remember was Bruce slapping my face. Not nastily. He was scared.

“I thought I’d really killed you this time,” he said.

There was blood everywhere. My nose was shattered. Bruce had knocked me out cold. As always he was apologetic. He insisted he loved me, he was under pressure at work, and that he didn’t know what had come over him.

I told him, “I hate you. I’m not going through this again. I’m leaving. Just go to your mother’s.”

For once he didn’t argue back. I think even he realized that this time he’d gone too far. He left and a friend drove me to the hospital, where I spent the next two hours trying to convince the staff that it was safe for me to go home to my baby. I had a serious concussion, but I told the nurses that I had someone at home who would wake me every few hours to make sure I was okay.

Long ago I’d made a promise to God that I wouldn’t allow a child of mine to be around violence, drugs, or alcohol. My siblings and I had suffered enough. I didn’t want my son growing up in the same environment. Marshall was fourteen months old, too young to understand what was happening. But even he had started to point at the marks on my face and say, “Boo, boo.” It broke my heart.

I barely slept, and the moment Marshall woke up I gathered a few of his clothes and a bag of diapers. I stuffed everything into a duffel bag. If I’d been thinking straight I’d have cleared out the envelopes where we kept the rent and electricity money. But I just took a twenty-dollar bill to add to the handful of dollars in my pocket. I didn’t even take the car, even though it was in my name and I had almost finished paying off the loan. I went to the grocery store to pick up my check, hand in my uniform, and say goodbye.

John, my boss, begged me to stay, but I just wanted to get as far from Williston as possible. Kenny, drove me to the railway station. There was a train leaving for Kansas City, a day and a half away. From there, it was just sixty miles to Saint Joseph.

I was hysterical, terrified Bruce would come looking for me. He’d threatened to kill me many times if ever I tried to leave him. I’d never been on a train before, and when two policemen boarded, I expected them to drag me off and return me to Bruce. But they just nodded in my direction. I had a fractured nose, two black eyes, and bumps on the back of my head. One woman asked me if I’d been in a car wreck. I just nodded. I didn’t want to talk to anyone.

It was freezing cold, and even though we were both bundled up in winter clothes, our hands were like blocks of ice. I couldn’t stop my teeth chattering. But at least we had the carriage to ourselves because everyone else had moved to warmer carriages.

A ticket conductor came through. He told me the heating had gone out and that I had to move. Eventually, we moved into the buffet car. I gave the steward my twenty-dollar bill for gravy and mashed potatoes and stupidly forgot to pick up the change. The man thought it was a tip. Then Marshall got a stomachache, and even though I rubbed his stomach, he cried off and on for the rest of the journey. By the time I arrived in Kansas City, sometime around two o’clock the next morning, I had just enough money to phone Mom.

Needless to say, she didn’t welcome me back with open arms. She shouted something about being woken up, said there was a big snowstorm in Saint Joe, and no one could drive out to get me. She told me to call back at a more civilized time. I sat in the station for what seemed like hours until a policeman appeared.

“Are you Debbie?” he asked.

I shook my head. Surely Bruce hadn’t tracked me down already?

“It’s okay,” he said. “Your mom called us. She’s going to wire some money to you for a bus ticket. Let me drive you to the terminal.”

I was so tired and hungry—if only I’d been thinking more clearly, I would have cashed my paycheck before I left. The bus station was deserted except for one clerk, who took pity on me when I told him I was waiting for money to get home.

When I asked him where the restroom was, he said, “Come downstairs with me.”

I followed him. Hopefully there’d be a warm office and maybe some food there.

“You’re very pretty,” he said, leering. “We can work something out.”

I ran into the bathroom where a woman overheard me inquiring about prune juice for my son’s tummy ache, and she found me some. I gave her my change—about seventy-two cents. Eventually I got Marshall to stop crying just before we boarded the bus. My baby was making himself sick, and I felt so helpless. I finally got home to Saint Joseph at 4 p.m. Mom didn’t even acknowledge my bruises.

“I really liked Bruce,” she said, as though everything were my fault. “How long are you going to stay?”

“Just a week or two, promise,” I said. I didn’t even last that long. Bruce kept phoning, and there were more deeply unpleasant dramas with Mom, so I moved in with Nan, who by then was also living in Saint Joe.

Nan urged me to take Bruce back too. She didn’t realize he’d changed so much. She said he kept calling, crying on the phone. Eventually I agreed to talk to him.

He told me to get my ass home, adding that I could bring “the kid” with me.

“The kid has a name,” I said.

I asked if he could send some of our clothes. He refused. I’d made Marshall several baby books, full of photos, listing things such as his favorite toy frog and his beloved cherry vanilla pudding. Bruce wouldn’t even mail those back to me. The next time I saw those baby books was when Marshall was famous. They popped up in a German magazine, alongside an interview with Bruce claiming he’d searched high and low for us but we’d disappeared.

I wanted Marshall to have a relationship with his father, because I remembered the pain I went through when my dad left. But Bruce didn’t want to know. After just a few weeks, the phone calls stopped. I set about making a new life. I knew I had to make it alone, for Marshall’s sake.

I filed for divorce, but Bruce held that up by telling the clerk and my mom that I was not a resident of Missouri for the legally required six months. Eventually he was ordered to pay Marshall sixty dollars a month in child support, but he only paid two or three times. Finally he took off to California to avoid having to pay anything at all.

I found a tiny apartment, got a job at a restaurant, and signed up to study at beauty school. Bruce’s Aunt Edna helped me care for Marshall. Every night when I came home, there’d be a smiley-face drawing or cardboard model waiting for me from Marshall. He loved to draw. He was also a born showman. At kindergarten, he played an Indian in a Thanksgiving play. His Uncle Ronnie, who was just two months older, was a pilgrim.

Marshall loved hearing stories about America’s history and was intrigued by the Wild West. Living in Saint Joseph, an old frontier staging post for cowboys, provided the perfect setting to learn about those things. It’s known as the town where the Pony Express began and where the outlaw Jesse James met his end.

Until 1860, letters from New York took thirty days via steamship to reach California. A group of ambitious businessmen set out to prove they could provide the same service more quickly by using relays of horses and riders. It took just ten days for post from Saint Joe to reach the gold-rush shantytowns near Sacramento. But, despite capturing the imagination of Americans and proving invaluable at the start of the Civil War, it went bankrupt in just nineteen months, losing its owners a then-spectacular five hundred thousand dollars. Then, in 1882, Jesse James was shot dead by his partners in crime, Bob and Charlie Ford, at his hideout on Lafayette Street. Marshall loved visiting Saint Joe’s downtown historical district to view the bullet hole in the wall at James’s house.

Marshall was a perfect baby who rarely cried. But as a child he developed a temper, just like his father. If he couldn’t get his own way, he’d lie on the floor screaming. I gave in to him all the time. He was all I had. I loved him so much. I wanted to shelter him from the world, and I wouldn’t hear anyone say a word against him. People said I should spank him, but I don’t believe in hitting children.

Tantrums aside, he was shy around strangers. I had to go outside with him to make him play with other children. For several years he preferred the company of his imaginary friend, Casper. He didn’t really watch
Casper the Friendly Ghost
much on TV, and he was mad about superheroes such as Spider-Man—but I guessed he got the idea for his imaginary friend from the show. He said Casper could walk through walls and would scold me for almost sitting on Casper. Marshall couldn’t understand why I couldn’t see Casper too.

My nickname for him was “Mick”—lots of people called him that rather than Marshall.

I tried to make up for the fact Marshall didn’t have a father by giving him everything he wanted. I never said no to him. At McDonald’s I always let him have two Happy Meals—he wanted the free toys more than the food. He collected figurines—Spider-Man, the Hulk, the He-Men, GI Joe, Batman and Robin. He charged around the apartment in a cape and mask, interchanging between playing Batman and Robin. He loved comic books full of cartoon heroes and copied them into his own coloring books. One Christmas, he asked for an extravagant Caped Crusader costume with all sorts of accessories, including a Batmobile. I forget the exact price, but it was hundreds of dollars. I tried to save up for it because I really wanted him to be happy, but it was just too much money.

I held down numerous jobs, from working in stores and waitressing to driving an ice-cream truck, so that Marshall could have a good life. I got jobs to fit in with Marshall; he often came with me to work.

Even when I briefly joined a group called Daddy Warbucks, singing backup-vocals, Marshall came with us on the road. We were a big band of hippies, and there was always someone to watch over him when we were on stage. We played Ramada Hotels and Holiday Inns, but I never got over my stage fright. The bigger the crowd, the worse I became. I used to stand with my back to the audience, staring at the drummer, whom I had a secret crush on.

I had lots of men friends. I went out with doctors and lawyers because I wanted to better myself. But compared with the sophisticated girls they usually dated, I felt inferior and inadequate. I lacked a fouryear college degree, I didn’t think I was pretty, and I hated being paraded around in gowns at prim and proper functions.

I had my heart broken by always getting too close. I was looking for the perfect soulmate and dad for Marshall. I always mothered my men friends and hoped I could change them to become my idea of perfect. I was also very jealous, which caused me to lose men, especially the ones who were funny, hardworking, and good to my son.

Charlie was my first serious boyfriend after Bruce. He was a great guy. He worked on the railroad in Missouri and would be back on weekends. We had lots of fun together, making wooden frames for waterbeds. Marshall seemed to care a lot about him, and my brothers Steve and Todd got on with him too. All was well, except we both found it hard to trust each other totally, and eventually our mutual jealousies ruined it.

I met Don, the taxi driver, upon moving to Michigan. We lived together for a year, but he had a fiery Italian temperament and was insanely jealous. Our relationship unraveled when we went to the Florida Keys. Marshall got badly sunburned, and his skin bubbled up so that he looked like an alligator. Don tried to stop me tending to him; he was even envious of the attention I gave my son. I left him the moment we returned home.

A few weeks later I met Curt Werner. He was three years younger than I was and five-foot-nine with coal-black hair and big brown eyes. He was totally wild and loved motorcycles. We became friends.

One night we were driving back from the movies when we noticed Don’s cab had caught fire and burned out. We thought nothing of it until Don blamed me, saying I’d set it on fire. Curt jumped out of the car, ordering Don to get away from me. I couldn’t believe he’d blamed me—I would never have done such a thing, not least as I knew how hard he’d worked to pay for that car.

My sister Tanya, who was thirteen, ran away from home. Mom put up wanted posters all over town and blamed me. She told the police I was hiding her. It’s true: I knew exactly where she was, but I wasn’t going to let Mom find her and beat her half to death.

Mom decided Curt was okay. We’d been dating less than three months when she encouraged us to get married. Big mistake—we barely knew each other. But he was gorgeous, he loved me, and he was great with Marshall. My son was my whole world, so it was important that Marshall liked him too.

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.