Chimezie stopped dancing after watching her mother, a ballet dance instructor, fall in class in front of a dozen students. She did not get up.

A year after her mother was laid to rest, Chimezie knew everything about aneurysms and a large deal about grief.

At fifteen, her mother's was the first dead body she had ever seen, and the last she had any desire to see.

But because life is a major witch and liaises with her lover, death, a week after the anniversary of her mother's death, Chimezie walked into her father's room to ask what he would have for breakfast. She found him sound asleep, just without the rise and fall of his chest.

When the neighbours came in, it was a sorry sight. A dead man and a mad daughter.

So the family's village people had succeeded in destroying them?

First it was the barrenness. Then it was a female child and two miscarriages. There was the wife's sudden death— definitely from spiritual arrows by envious village people.

Now it is the death of their brother— the hospital would have a word for it, like they did for the cause of his wife's death, but every true African knows it was a spiritual attack.

Finally, their daughter, gotten after so many years of pain, had gone mad.

Admittedly, one could see how the demise of both parents within the space of a year might cause some bolts in the brain to loosen, but it must be the work of village people.

Why else would she be dancing while her father's body was becoming stiff?

Chimezie could not release the tears that stung her eyes even as she danced vigorously.

"No, no, no, he did it all wrong! All wrong!"

This continued until she was held down by the youths and made to face Madam Doctor, the compound's very own psychologist, and hence, the chosen leader in this situation.

"What are you doing, my dear? Who did what all wrong?"

Chimezie went still long enough to be released, before she replied.

"That is not how you die. You die dancing!"

Her arms flung out and caught one of the young men on the nose, ensuing chaos in her house as she pirouetted away.