The first call
I gave my number to a friend to give to a boy who needed it. He called at one in the morning. This is how the line began.
A friend of a friend, a boy in Owerri, twenty, put out of his house on Thursday, sleeping in a church that does not know what he is. My friend asked if she could give him my number. I said yes without thinking. He called at one in the morning, and I talked to him until four, and I did not say anything clever. I said what the woman under the umbrella said to me. Sit down. Then I told him about the floor at E.'s uncle's and the plate of rice outside the door, and he laughed, at four in the morning, in a church, and I thought: that is it. That is the whole thing.
So I have told three friends they can give the number out. Not on Facebook; in the low voice, to the people who need it, the way the lawyer was recommended. And two of them, who are like me, have said they will take calls too, so that it is not only my phone.
I do not know what to call it. A line, maybe. Not a helpline; that sounds like an office. A line, like the one E. and I walked to the end of on the stadium road. The number is the one from the small notebook, which I have finally found a use for that is not leaving.
Three calls this week. One from a girl. I did not know girls would call. I know now.