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After delivering her second daughter, Whitney, Kim recovered at the house that Eminem bought after their divorce. By early 2003, speculation held that they might remarry.

“Oh, no, no more marriage,” Eminem also said in April 2002. “I would rather fucking be on a coach flight with *NSYNC at the back of the plane—the last row in them seats that don’t go back. I’d rather be stuck there with the bathroom out of order. I would rather have a baby through my penis than get married again. I’m chillin’ on marriage. Girlfriends, maybe here or there. But no more marriage, dog. I don’t ever want to go through what I went through last year again.”

He went through a divorce, a countersuit, a settlement, a battle for joint custody of his daughter, and soon after, an appeal of the child-support settlement, which allowed Kim $142,000 a year. It seemed to be, given her coming child, an appeal with ulterior motives, particularly in light of the fact that Harter is wanted by the city of Detroit on a felony warrant for possession with intent to distribute drugs and several other offenses—jail time would clearly hinder his ability to provide child support. “I can’t say too much about my family for legal reasons and what happens when I say too much,” Eminem says. “But about that, I really can’t say anything. I just try to keep Hailie sheltered from these things.”

Eminem and Kim shared the kind of first love that is etched in high school desks; one that can be as intoxicating and unstable as a crack habit. It is a love-hate bind on par with Eminem and his mother—it makes for tragic, tormented art and great newsprint, and it isn’t a joyride. Little is known of Kim’s point of view outside of what can be gleaned from her actions. She refuses to be interviewed. I met her circumstantially when Eminem’s fame was still a whiff on the air. I doubt she wanted to meet anyone new, especially a writer, late that night on Eminem’s first night home, just a few nights before he would leave again, this time for a performance at MTV’s Spring Break. She was civil, but hardly friendly; her raised guard was a sensate force field.

Kim’s comments in the press, mostly the Detroit press, have been few. She maintains that she and Eminem do not care to live a flamboyant life; that Eminem’s anger toward his mother in song is very real; that since most of his fans are women, they don’t want to know that he’s married; and that nobody “in their right mind would cheat on their millionaire husband—especially with a nobody at a neighborhood bar.”

“Kim is the person I want to know about,” says Sasha Frere Jones. “She is the one I feel bad for. I might do those things if I were Eminem’s wife, if my husband had people chanting ‘Kill Kim.’ My heart goes out to her. I’d like to read her autobiography. It just seems like their whole thing is nothing but bad. And she’s been sacrificed by her husband. It would be one thing if Eminem were married to Jay-Z, then they could do dis records back and forth. But this poor woman doesn’t get to respond. Jesus, do you imagine it’s easy to live with Eminem? What could she possibly have done?”

The few signs there are point to a woman unprepared for the chaos and distance of a famous partner. One side of her portrait is of a regular girl who wants a life and family. “It’s hard for Kim being the only parent,” her mother told People magazine in 2000, “and handling all the [media] outside her house. She can’t even go in the backyard.”

“This is a lady who prefers to wear jeans and gym shoes as opposed to Versace and Armani,” said Kim’s lawyer, Neil Rocking, in the same article. “A small-town girl who wants to be a mom.”

Whatever the reality, Eminem’s relationship with Kim is a recurring theme in his music; his love for her, and his hatred. “If I was her, I woulda ran when I heard some of those songs,” Dr. Dre says. “That shit is out there. She gives him a concept, though, and that’s cool shit, no doubt.” For all the ups and downs that Kim and Marshall Mathers have had—as kids, as young parents,