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I lay on the floor and listened with my eyes closed. This gave me protection. I could hear my grandmother in the kitchen getting breakfast. The house smelled of coffee and bacon grease. My grandfather's voice was at the kitchen table with my mother calling him, "Daddy". Her cigarette smoke filled our small spaces, starting from her mouth, moving around the corner into the living room where my brothers slept, looking for clean air and finally into the bedroom where I listened. 
Mom was talking about my father. She had a new audience for her anger and they listened because she was their daughter. She always came to her parents in need. She too wore the dust from Oklahoma and was down and out. Grandpa asked how she would be able to take care of five kids if she divorced my dad the amount of child support would be small because my father was a mailman. She would have to work. My grandmother made breakfast and didn't talk. 
Listening, coffee being poured, sugar added, chairs scraped across linoleum, plates set down on the wood table. My mother not eating, smoking and coffee was her breakfast. My grandfather's plate was ready for his approval. A circle placed on a chipped painted rectangle. A mumble of thanks to my grandmother, his knife and fork was ready to eat eggs from their own chickens. 
I would collect the eggs. I had to steal them from the hens. They wanted to keep them, they wanted babies. The eggshells were dirty with small soft feathers still attached. These eggs came right from the source not out of a grocery store in a cardboard carton. I
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