“Slippin’ Into Darkness”

“Slippin’ Into Darkness” appears as the epigraph to section 12, between Nora’s walk across the border and the heading “Tijuana / 1997.” At this threshold in the narrative, the song gives the transition a warning note: its repeated image of slipping into darkness is joined to the promise that the person who does so will pay. The excerpt is attributed to War.

Placement and Form

The epigraph follows a brief account of Nora’s journey: she gets off a train in San Diego, takes the trolley to San Ysidro, and walks across the border. The chapter then pauses for the song before naming Tijuana and the year 1997. This arrangement makes the lyric a hinge between the border crossing and the next location-and-time marker, rather than part of the account of how Nora travels.

The printed heading reads “Slipping into Darkness,” while the song excerpt begins “Slippin’ into darkness,” and is credited to War as “Slippin’ Into Darkness.” The difference between the heading’s spelling and the lyric’s colloquial form keeps the phrase legible as a heading while preserving the song’s wording in the epigraph.

The Warning in the Lyric

The excerpt first evokes a mother’s voice: “When I heard my mother say . . .” What follows is direct warning, addressed to someone already slipping into darkness: “You been slippin’ into darkness, oh, oh, oh / Pretty soon you’re going to pay.” The movement from the ongoing action in “been slippin’” to the forecast “Pretty soon” gives the lines a compact progression: a course has begun, and its consequence is approaching.

The song’s language does not specify what the darkness or payment means. Its placement beside Nora’s border crossing invites the warning to color the transition, but the excerpt itself supplies no further explanation or explicit identification of its target. The mother’s remembered speech makes the warning sound personal, while the heading’s repetition of the darkness image turns it into the section’s frame.

Narrative Function

The epigraph interrupts forward movement with a short lyric before the narrative resumes in Tijuana. Its warning contrasts with the concrete, step-by-step account of Nora’s passage from train to trolley to pedestrian bridge: the crossing is physically complete, but the song introduces a less literal language of descent and consequence. The text establishes that tonal contrast without stating that the lyric describes Nora’s feelings or predicts a particular outcome.

As a result, “Slippin’ Into Darkness” functions here as a compact interpretive frame rather than a plot event. The title names the image, the lyric makes it a warning, and the placement carries that warning across the transition into the 1997 Tijuana section.