Brooklyn Chasing Intruders

“They’ve unleashed my inner Brooklyn,” my mom yelled, knuckles white around the steering wheel of her car as we chased a van down Centennial Avenue, a sleepy neighborhood street whose only usual commotion was caused by the peacocks escaping from their enclosure on the corner lot.  

“Mom, we should turn around!” I pleaded from the passenger seat, not wanting to provoke whoever it was we were chasing. They were criminals after all.

“No. You fuck with my family, you fuck with me. I’m going to scare the shit out of them and they’ll know to never come back here again.”

What started as a Sunday afternoon trip to Chipotle had taken quite a turn. 

It was early in the afternoon when my mom and I pulled into our driveway after returning from lunch. As is typical of Northern California in early March, a rain storm had set in, and we decided we’d wait it out in the car to avoid getting wet. Really, I think we didn’t want to interrupt our gossip session about the latest drama on my soccer team and the rain gave us a convenient excuse to carry on. We probably would have stayed sitting there in the car for another hour, but for a sudden motion in the bushes.

“Did you see that?” my mom asked.

“No, see what?” 

She rolled down the window and stood up, leaning her whole head and upper body out of the car like a dog on a joy ride. 

“Hey!” she shouted, “I see you!”

And then I saw him too. A man wearing a black ski mask poked his head up from behind the bushes. Then, with two large strides and a seemingly effortless jump he hopped the fence.  

“Put your seatbelt on,” my mom said as she pressed down on the parking break and put the car into reverse. 

“What? What are you doing? He’s on foot, in the neighbor’s backyard. How is a car in any way helpful?” I was trying to talk her down from whatever we were about to do.  

“He’s probably got a get-away car,” she answered as if this explained everything. She turned left out of the driveway and we headed toward the property the would-be intruder had fled to. Sure enough, a white van across the street peeled out onto the road right as we reached the house. How could he have hopped our fence and then another fence and made it into that car so quickly, I thought to myself, questioning whether this vehicle was in any way related.  

“Maybe that’s not the same...” I started to say and then trailed off when I saw the van continue to accelerate. It had to be approaching forty-five miles per hour. 

“No, that’s him,” my mom said as she waited for the oncoming traffic to pass so we could turn left and follow the van.

When the traffic cleared we began our pursuit. I watched our speedometer accelerate higher and higher, matching my elevating heart rate in perfect lockstep. 

“Jesus, mom. Slow down!” I shouted as we rounded the corner of Centennial Avenue. I noted the peacocks ambling about their pasture. Their colorful feathers were not out on display; clearly their anxiety levels were no match for mine.

“There they are!” my mom pointed as the van sped straight through the four way stop some two-hundred yards up the road.

“This. Is. Insane.” I said, enunciating each syllable like my summer drama camp instructor had taught me to do. “You must e-nun-c-ate ev-er-y word,” she would say, deliberately and slowly exaggerating the formation her lips and teeth made as she spoke

“They’ve unleashed my inner Brooklyn,” my mom said with this predatory look in her eyes.

“Mom, we should turn around,” I said as we approached the intersection.

“No. You fuck with my family, you fuck with me. I’m going to scare the shit out of them and they’ll know to never come back here again.”

After we passed through the four way stop, the van was nowhere in sight.

“Damn it!” My mom hit the steering wheel hard. “They’re going to get away.”

“Maybe we should let them and just go back home and call the cops,” I said, trying to reason out the best thing to do.

“No, we need to get their plates.” she said as she stopped the car for a moment to think. 

“There’s a few cul-de-sacs up ahead. They probably turned on to one of those, ya know? To wait things out for a bit and hope we drive past,” I said. 

“You’re right,” she said, putting her foot back on the gas, but this time creeping along at a comfortable twenty miles per hour like a responsible neighbor.

We were approaching the turn-off for the first cul-de-sac when I saw the white van through a gap between the branches of the trees. It was heading along the cul-de-sac street back towards the road we were on.

“Look! There they are,” I pointed. She saw them and sped up a bit to block their exit path from the cul-de-sac.

“What are you doing? You don’t wanna provoke them.” I saw the threat register in her mind. 

“Get down right now,” she yelled pointing towards the floor of the passenger seat.

“Holy Shit. This is wild,” I said, nervous laughter and adrenaline bubbling out of me as I crouched into a ball on the floor, letting the leftover mud from my soccer cleats grind into my knees.

“I’ll get their plates. You write them down on your phone,” she said. The fire in her voice was gone. Now it was all composer and steadiness. 

There was a brief pause and I swear I could hear our hearts beating in tandem, mine like the rapid succession of a hi-hat and hers like a base drum, steady and low, beating once for every four beats of mine.

“Okay, I can almost make it out. Okay, get ready,” she said and then proceeded to read me the plate number.

“Got it, now drive!” I shouted up at her.

Her eyes flickered down at me for a brief moment. “I will, I just want to stare these fuckers down a bit longer.” She held two fingers up to her eyes and then pointed them at the driver of the van, making the ubiquitous I see you sign. Then, a moment later her foot was back on the gas and we were moving.

Peering out the rearview window of our car as I climbed back on to the passenger seat, I saw the van hightailing it in the other direction, a small cloud of dust from the exhaust forming behind it. 

We proceeded to call the police and give them the license plate number along with a vague description of the two men in the vehicle, not that we got a great look at either of them. They reprimanded my mom for her actions, but did admit that there’s nothing they could have done without plates or a facial ID, not that any of the information we provided came to anything. But, to my knowledge, the would-be intruders never came back.

The Brooklyn in my mom gave them a scare, but it gave the two of us the car ride of a lifetime.