My Son Marshall, My Son Eminem (8 page)

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 than 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.

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 into 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.

We’d always written each other poetry to explain our feelings. I still spent nights scribbling down my thoughts. Like the narrator in the Moody Blues’ song “Nights in White Satin,” I wrote many letters to Marshall that I never meant to send. Writing was therapeutic. Sometimes I took an inspirational line from one of my poems and stuck it on the fridge door. “We are born crying, we must learn to laugh” was one. Another said, “Children are on loan to us from God.”

Marshall stopped showing me his rhymes. Kim didn’t approve. But he was messing around with stage names. His first professional name was M&M—a play on his initials. But his friends called him PW—it stood for pussy-whipped.

I know teenagers rebel and I suppose I was lucky; Marshall was a late starter. But by his sixteenth birthday, he was out of control. He was angry all the time.

Kim wanted to know how she could track down her real dad. Then Marshall started asking about his dad. For the first time I decided to contact Bruce. I tracked down his telephone number in California and, with shaking hands, dialed. Bruce wasn’t in, but his wife, Lesley, sounded lovely. She promised to see what she could do.

A few weeks later a letter arrived. I recognized the handwriting immediately. Marshall tore the envelope open. A short note and two photographs fell out.

Just wanted to drop you a quick note to let you know we’re really looking forward to seeing you soon. Enclosed is a recent picture of me so you’ll know who to look for at the airport. I’m sure you’re going to enjoy yourself out here, the weather is just great and we live right across the street from the beach, so bring your trunks. Hope to see you soon.

Dad

We studied the picture of a middle-aged long-haired Bruce holding a birthday cake. He’d grown ugly, but I could see Marshall had his chin. The other snapshot was of a much younger Bruce, holding a surfboard.

“Is that it?” Marshall said, throwing the letter down. He said he didn’t want to go to California, and I certainly didn’t want to see Bruce again. Just looking at the pictures brought back memories of violence.

Marshall never mentioned his father again. But his rebellion continued. He took it out on any man who dared to cross our threshold. He’d always been jealous of my male friends; now he forbade them to come through the door.

“You’re my mom. I’m in charge. This is my house,” he’d say.

He was full of teenage insecurities and totally jealous. He accused me of loving Nathan more than him. Time and again, I reassured him. I love both my sons equally.

There were still flashes of the old Marshall. He continued to sign Christmas, birthday, and Mother’s Day cards, “Love, your number one son, Marsh.” But the close relationship we’d always had was fractured. I couldn’t help but blame Kim.

Marshall quit Warren’s Lincoln High School. I only found out when he refused to get up one morning. It turned out that he hadn’t been in weeks.

I gave him my lovely Lincoln Town Car on his seventeenth birthday because he needed to get around. When Kim wound him up, Marshall pounded his fists on the car and kicked the tires. I’d never seen a vehicle with so many dents in it.

I was terrified whenever my son left in the car. I worried about him all the time. He was forever getting pulled over by the police on Dresden. In my opinion he was being harassed, and when I made inquiries I was told they could pull him over if they wanted to.

Sometimes he would be frisked and his tapes and stuff would be thrown out of the car. My dear friends across the street would call or run over to tell me they’d seen the police pull my son over again. Thank God it eventually stopped. I even tried following him a few times, just to make sure he would get wherever he was going, until he found out.