She was in her room when she heard Mom saying that Christmas presents arrived by post. This by itself was unusual enough but hearing that they came from the uncle living in Rio drove her to run to the living room where Mom was. She ran and stood up next to Mom’s left side and looked closely at the packages Mom got in her hands. Not only one: there were two packages! She barely blinked, staring at them at the same time as her chest would quickly expand and retract with air pumped by the thought that anything could be inside those red paper wraps. The sister was surely there too, on Mom’s right side, standing closer to Mom and the presents. It didn’t matter, she was focused on the presents. Mom moved towards the sisters’ bedroom, keeping the parcels close to her. She followed Mom with synchronized steps following her pace, as if she had been magnetized.

The two sisters quickly sat on the parquet floor and Mom gently sat on the bed. Their disposition was like an invisible triangle where all could easily look at each other. However, she only looked at Mom, who then announced that the packages had name tags. She then stretched her arm towards her announcing “this is yours”. She enjoyed every inch of her own chest leaning towards the gift and stretching her arm to get it. It was rectangle shaped with the size of a notebook, comfortably weighted, not too light, not too heavy. She calmly unwrapped the paper so that it wouldn’t be damaged. She started to see a vivid yellow color underneath. When finishing the whole unwrapping, she saw an intriguing hard-plastic suitcase. It had two locks that demanded some degree of finger power to be opened. While pinching the first lock with her fingers, she noticed that it required quite an amount of strength to get it open. She tried to hold it in different ways until she heard the plastic “click”. Then the next lock.  She opened the case. It had some blocks that together formed a picture that had an effect of being drawn with coloring pencils. It had some characters that she couldn’t recognize from any cartoons or literature she had seen before. She took one of the very light weighted cubes from inside the case and saw that it had different colors and images on all its other sides.

She then turned her gaze to the sister who had already unwrapped her present: she had a Barbie doll in her hands. It was a beautiful Barbie doll. She stood silent for a few moments, enough for alerting Mom and stimulating her to comment about how nice was the puzzle that the daughter got. These words were heard but not they were just sounds that didn’t really bring any meaning to them. She asked the sister if she wanted to swap presents but the sister almost laughed when she said “of course not”.  She couldn’t understand why she wouldn’t get a Barbie doll too. Why she was the one to receive the yellow case. What would’ve made the uncle to love her sister more, or to make him think that she deserved a different present than a Barbie? She had her forehead frowned by questions and disappointment. She then turned back to the puzzle trying to convince herself that it could bring joy. She started to notice the details in the drawings, but without noticing her focus shifted back to the sister and the Barbie. The sun was creating a golden glow upon them both.