Negrita

"Oh, my god," I uttered when I saw her face. My heart skipped a beat. I hadn't seen that face for nearly forty years now, yet there she was gazing out of the screen of my PC, with that enigmatic smile I loved so dearly.

"Negrita," I called. I reached out and touch the screen to be sure it was real.

I was taking a virtual tour through an art museum's website, never expecting that it would transport me through time and space to the woman I first loved, back to the Sixties at Grainer University. Back to the time of the Beatles, the Fantasiks, Star Trek, the Hippies, Haight-Ashbury, Free Love, the Vietnam War - and Negrita.

It seemed so long ago until now. But now, after all these years, suddenly she's in front of me, in a painting.

My heart racing, I did a search on the painting. It was done by a noted South American painter.

Oh, God, it couldn't be her - the painting was over a hundred years old! I thought.

But it had to be her - she had Negrita's eyes and smile, the same oval face. She had the lips that I kissed so often. She had the same raven hair and dark complexion of my South American princess. She even held her hand in the same way, gracefully against her face.

No, it was Negrita; there could be no question of that - or perhaps it was her grandmother or a preincarnation backwards in time. But there was no question whom it was, for she was the same woman who taught a tender and callow twenty-five year-old fellow the art of love and how to love a woman. She was my first true love, the first woman I asked to marry me. And after a year of beauty and love, she was gone. A tear in my eye, my mind drifted back to the moment I met her.

I was a graduate student in Biopsychology at Grainer University, located in College Park, Ohio. It was the fall of 1966, and I was working in the computer center as the statistical consultant, helping the university's graduate students and faculty to harness the then mysterious mainframe computer to do their statistical analyses.

# # #

"Excuse me," a gentle voice inquired in a Spanish-accented lilt, "but are you Alex O'Connor?"

I looked up from the book I was reading, and there standing in the walkway between desks was a little pixie of a woman, with a swarthy complexion, long raven hair that reached half way down her back. About twenty, she stood perhaps five-feet two, and couldn't have weight a hundred pounds. Smartly dressed in a red sweater and skirt that high lighted her gorgeous figure, she stood clutching a box of IBM cards to her very shapely bosom. Her brown eyes sparkled, and she had the cutest smile. Then I smelled her perfume and knew I was in heaven.

"Yes," I replied dumbfounded. "Can I help you?"

"Yes, I hope so," she said in that enchanting lilting voice that would melt butter. "My professor has these data cards she wants analyzed. So she asked me to do it, but I don't have any idea what to do. Can you help me, please?"

"Certainly," I replied, already enthralled by her perfume. "Please come in and tell me about it."

Thus Negrita entered my life. Since I had nothing else to do and she was not only one of the most pleasant people I had ever met, but also one of the nicest smelling, I broke the rules and set about helping her without even asking her for a charge number.

"Please sit down," I answered as I hastily cleaned up the clutter on my desk. "And may I ask your name?"

"I am Hilda de la Cumbre," she said, pronouncing her first name without the "H", making it "Ilda." I knew that from my college Spanish that the "H" was silent. I could also guess from her given name that there were some German influences in her family, but it didn't show. She was clearly a South American beauty.

"You can call me `Negrita', if you like," she added in the most pleasant voice. "In fact, I prefer it."

"Little black one," I translated. "It is very befitting of you," I added.

And it did befit her, with her dark Latin complexion and raven hair, I could imagine her dressed in a long elegant low-necked Spanish lace gown, bedeck with pearls, wearing a long lacy shawl over her shoulders, and a pearl encrusted tiara atop of her coiffured hair.

"¿Habla usted español?" she inquired, curious.

"Un poco," I replied, "But not very well. That is one of my great faults; I have not learned to speak Spanish, although I can read it some. I took it in college."

I paused to appreciate the apparition in my office. "But enough, you have work to do. Show me what is where, and what you need."

# # #

Her problem was fairly straightforward, a three-way analysis of variance. It was clear she was very intelligent and had a good understanding of statistics, unlike so many other women I was to meet in the computer center. Once I had everything figured out, I showed her how the format card should be coded and set about showing her how to use the keypunch machine. About two hours later, she was all done.

"Can I buy you a cup of coffee, please?" she pleaded gently with her impish grin. "After all you have done, that is the least I could do for you."

I couldn't have refused her, even if I had wanted, and I very definitely didn't want to refuse.

"Sure, we can go over to Pops," I suggested.

As we walked over the campus to Dinky Town and Pops Diner, I asked where she is from.

"Manizales, Colombia," she replied.

"That's up in the Cordillera Mountains, isn't it?"

She paused, stood and looked at me in surprise. "You know that?"

"Sure," I shrugged my shoulders. I always wanted to go to South America and travel around, and maybe some day I will."

Then on impulse, I took her hands into mine and asked, "Will you be my guide when I do?"

"Sure," she replied with a smile and a little laugh. And as we walked, she took my hand and held it. Since I thought it was some South American custom, I let her. After all, I was enjoying it.

We talked for hours at Pops. I learned all about South America, the fact she went to boarding school in Switzerland as a girl and spoke French, German and English as well as her native Spanish. Then we got in a discussion about García Lorca, my favorite Spanish poet, who was shot by the Fascists during the Spanish Civil War. She asked me if I had read his play Bodas de Sangre or Blood Wedding, and I said no, so she said I should, and if she still had it, she'd lend me a copy.

It was almost seven before I notice the time and heard my stomach growl.

"Hungry?" I asked.

Then I heard her stomach growl as well, and she laughed. "I think my stomach said `Sí'," she giggled with that infectious smile.

"Like Chinese food?" I suggested.

She looked worried. "Do I have to use chopsticks?"

"You don't know how?"

She shook her head.

"I'll let you use a fork, but only after I try to teach you," I joked. "Com'on," I said, and again she took my hand. I was happy as a cat with a bowl of cream.

Then she did something strange and I was not to learn what it was all about until later. She took my other hand as well and stood in the middle of the sidewalk, facing me, holding both my hands in hers, and looking up at me with a contemplative look, as though deciding a weighty issue in her mind. In fact, she had made two decisions, one I was to learn shortly, the other much later.

"Teach me to use chopsticks, if you can," she challenged with a laugh and dropping one hand to walk along with me, happily swinging our arms as we went.

# # #

Although I was eventually able to teach her to use chopsticks, she used a fork that night, and we chatted and chatted, until the Chinese owner of the Happy Dragon started making little signals that it was closing time. I paid and left a nice tip because he was so polite about our staying so late.

"Gosh, it's ten," I said when we got outside.

"Alex," she said with that pleading tone of hers, looking innocently up at me as she held my hand, "could you please drive me home. I live out on Lake Lawson, and the last bus left an hour ago."

"Sure," I agreed, and walked hand in hand with her to my car about three blocks away where I usually parked during the day.

# # #

I followed her directions and discovered she had a lakeside bungalow. Although originally a summerhouse, it had been converted to year-round use, and since she liked her privacy, she rented it.

I parked the car and opened the door for my Spanish princess. Negrita took my hand and tugged gently.

"Come on in for a minute," she begged.

"Sure," I agreed.

She led me to her door, unlocked it, and let me in. Then taking my two hands into hers, she stood on her toes and kissed me on the lips.

"Be nice to me, Alex. Please," she whispered as she hugged me and then kissed me again, this time passionately.

 

The Lesson

"Good morning," I whispered to Negrita, who was curled up beside me. She had a queen-sized bed, and her bedroom window looked out over the lake. If there ever had been a room meant for love, this was it.

"Oh," she grumbled as I kissed her on her ear. She was not a morning person at all, and I soon learned that it took about an hour to get her up. Sensing me near in her half-state of sleep and wakefulness, she pulled me close and made little mumbling sounds like Cleo, my cat, did when I awoke her from her catnaps.

Slowly, she woke, and as she did, she crawled up on my chest, pressing her firm and ample breasts against me and lubriciously rubbed her nipples over the hair on my chest. She was truly feline in nature, and move like a cat in so many ways.

"Buenos días," she murmured with a happy smile as she stretched.

"Good morning," I said as I kissed her. "That was quiet a night," I said as I remembered the passion of stripping our clothes off and the frantic sex that followed.

She smiled, but it seemed a little pouty, almost a sulk.

"Ready for a shower?" she suggested.