Whatever You Say I Am_ The Life and Times of Eminem - Anthony Bozza [108]
That’s why I dropped out of school. As soon as I turned fifteen, my mother was like, ‘If you don’t get a fucking job and help me out with these bills, your ass is out.’ I ended up getting a factory job while I was still enrolled in school. I wasn’t old enough to drop out yet, so I stayed enrolled and never went. I worked at Gearse Machinery, this little factory about a mile from where we lived. I swept floors and made $140 a week working full-time. My mother would keep the hundred and give me the forty. Then she would fucking kick me out, half the time right after she took the money.
I stayed with my mom until I was eighteen, but I kept getting kicked out. I was only there full-time really when I was thirteen and fourteen. My mother did a lot of fucking dope and shit, so she had mood swings. She took a lot of pills. She took two or three naps a day. She’d go to sleep cool and wake up and start yelling, ‘What the fuck’s wrong with this fucking house? This house is a fucking mess! Motherfucker, get the fuck out!’ My room was upstairs, so she’d come up and throw open the door and flip on me. I used to record her. I’ve got those tapes somewhere. I’d play them for my grandmother. She’s actually my great-grandmother—my mother’s grandmother. Those two never got along, but I liked her. I used to go over there when my mother would kick me out. She’s real old now, like ninety-two, I think.
Exhibit B: testimony of Deborah Mathers-Briggs
DATED MARCH 1999:
I put a lot of effort into Marshall and a lot of time as a single parent. I’m over forty now and Marshall’s twenty-four. I live in St. Joseph, Missouri, right outside of Kansas City. Jesse James is from here, and it was the home of the Pony Express. All of my friends from grade school call all the time, my doctor and lawyer friends all see the video, but they say they don’t like the part where Marshall says, ‘I just found out that my mom does more dope than I do.’ Well, that’s just a joke. At first I was really hurt, but then Marshall said, ‘Mom, it doesn’t mean anything. Don’t take it personally.’ I felt a little intimidated by it because Marshall was raised in a drug- and alcohol-free environment. If I were like that, he would have turned out to be a loser. I worked hard to raise him. I went through beauty school after high school and divorced his dad when Marshall was two. He’s never even seen his real father, but he’s got his name—he’s the third. His father lives in L.A. When I had Marshall, I had toxemia poisoning and went into a coma. So his father named him after himself. We had talked about it, but while I was out, he signed all the papers. Then he had nothing to do with Marshall, even while we were together for those few years. He was very jealous of Marshall. I got married at fifteen and had Marsh at seventeen. Bruce, his dad’s nickname was Bruce, was twenty-one or twenty-two. I left a message with Grandmother Mathers a few months ago about all of the stuff happening with Marshall’s career and told her to tell his dad to give him a holler and she asked me why. I said forget it. That’s their mentality.
Me and his father were in a band, Robbing the Satellites and Daddy Warbucks. His dad was the drummer and I was the backup singer. Our management had a deal for us to play at every Ramada and Holiday Inn. We traveled over Montana and South Dakota for two years. Marshall was with us at the time, I knew he’d end up doing something musical.
I left Marshall’s father because he became abusive. He drank and was heavily into drugs, and I didn’t want to raise my son that way. In 1976, I had taken my last beating and left everything behind and headed to Missouri. I even had a Buick Skylark almost paid off. I haven’t been in touch with Marshall’s dad since. He never paid child support. Well, we saw one check but nothing else. He was a mommy’s boy. He and his mom moved to California. He’s been married five or six times. [Though