It’s just a picture. She is looking at the camera, head tilted to the right so her cheek rests on her shoulder. Look carefully at the curve of her lips and you see more compliance than joy – whoever took the photo probably asked her to smile or say “cheese,” so she did. Her eyes are bright, big and beautiful, maybe soft and peaceful. If you look into them long enough, they will show you whatever you want to see.
The little girl in the picture is dead now.
Jayleah Bureau lived on Canton Circle in Concord with her mother and father. We know that she was sweet and that she loved to sing, and we know that somebody took her life.
A neighbor returning home from work on March 15 saw a man crying as he carried Jayleah’s lifeless body out of her home. The neighbor didn’t know what had happened, nor, it seems, did anybody else on Canton Circle. They still don’t. We don’t. All we know is that it took four months for her death to be ruled a homicide by blunt force trauma and that nobody has been charged. All we know is that she was 3 years old and will never be 4.
Mothers and fathers sometimes say, “I would die for my child,” a testament to what they would sacrifice to assure life for their offspring. It’s a morbid, jarring proclamation – and unnecessary, too. Human beings are hardwired to put the lives of children above their own. In that dark fantasy in which a parent is forced to choose between their own life and that of their child, who would need time to answer? There are plenty of people, too, who wouldn’t need time to decide whether to risk their own life to save a child who wasn’t their own – such is the strength of the biological impulse to secure the chain of existence.
But every year in America, about 1,500 children die of abuse or neglect. In moments of rage and cruelty, biology’s promise is shredded by dark, unknowable, inhuman impulses. The chain breaks a little.
We don’t know what happened to Jayleah Bureau. We don’t know who killed her. All we know is that she is now among the children who couldn’t be saved.
If you look at the picture and focus on her eyes, you can see whatever you want to see. There’s innocence, and love, and trust. There’s wonder and curiosity. There’s light. And when you find out she is a victim of homicide, you wonder if you don’t see just a hint of fear, or maybe sadness. After a while, all you see is emptiness.
An editorial should say something. It should point to the problem and offer a solution. But the path to a world where children don’t die tragically doesn’t exist. It never will. All we can ask is that everybody look after the children, all of them, as if they were their own.
Jayleah Bureau was a child in this city. She was sweet and she loved to sing, and now she’s gone. She will be missed.