Sand

The opening monologue of Telling Tales, "Sand" focuses on an eight-year-old girl whose friend has been raped and murdered. The narrator tells about the day that the neighborhood men caught the rapist, which causes her to recollect the violence he inflicted upon her friend. The neighborhood men throw the rapist in the playground sandbox and beat him. Long after the rapist has been turned in to the police, the neighborhood children avoid the sandbox.

Jesus

"Jesus" is about a young girl whose older sister, Tati, suffers from severe lead poisoning. While Tati is in and out of the hospital, her illness becomes the focus of the family and demands most of the attention of the narrator's parents. The narrator's mother tells her to pray to Jesus and gives her a picture of a Jesus with a bleeding heart. When the narrator makes a pincushion for her mother...