Imperceptible Mutabilities in the Third Kingdom: Suzan-Lori Parks and the Shared Struggle to Perceive

Imperceptible Mutabilities in the Third Kingdom: Suzan-Lori Parks and the Shared Struggle to Perceive JAMES FRIEZE [MR. SERGEANT SMITH): Thuh events of my destiny ssgonna fall inluh place. What events? That Idont know. But they gonna fall intuh place all right. I The thinking of Mr. Sergeant Smith. would-be hero of the fourth and final section of Suzan-Lori Parks's Imperceptible Mutabilities in the Third Kingdom. is wishful in the extreme. He has, after all, been waiting what seems like an eternity for the Commander to honour him with that vague. but distinctly noble thing: a Distinction. Waiting for the Distinction is also the chief preoccupation of Mrs. Smith and of their children. Buffy and Muffy. The fami ly's waiting is far from passive. In anticipation of Mr. Smith's homecoming, they clean the house. and especially father's desk. They discuss the clothes that the girls should wear for the big welcome. settling for "perm press [...Jpolka-dotted [...J swisses" (59). They pore over the letters that Mr. Smith sends them. searching for clues as to when the Distinction will be awarded. Though the official purpose of examining the letters is to ascertain how much favour father has managed to curry with the Army. their analysis is also driven by an unofficial purpose: to determine how much daddy is thinking of each member of his family. To interpret correspondence with a precision appropriate to military matters . the three female Smiths have constructed a ledger. with multiple columns . which they fill in as follows. MRS. SMITH: [••. J "Subject" : uh letter. Check thuh "non bill" column. [...JBUFFY: "Contents"? [...JMRS. SMITH : Write - uh - "general news." [...J Slash - "report of duties" (62. intervening dialogue omitted). Then the final columns: '''Mention of Work': check: ·yes...· When it comes to the category titled "Mention of Family." an argument ensues. since Buffy was mentioned but Muffy was not. Sandwiched in the middle of these formalities is the column titled "Signs of Distinction." Mrs. Smith asks. "What'd we put last time." "Last letter's Signs of Distinction were Modern Drama. 41 (1998) 523 JAMES FRIEZE 'on the horizon,'" infonns Buffy. "Before that?" asks the mother. "Soon," says Buffy. " Before that," she adds, with exemplary efficiency, "he reported his Distinction to be arriving quote any day now unquote" (62-{i4). To comfort her sister Muffy, who is upset at not being mentioned, Buffy tells her of a family called the Censors. "Mr. Censor," says Buffy, "is a man who won't let Sergeant Smith say certain things because certain things said may put the Effort in danger." She explains that Mr. Smith "deals in a language of codes - secret signs and signals" (64). It is no coincidence that Buffy, the most adept of the female Smiths at coordinating the ledger, is also the most deeply immersed in the lore of military intelligence. So zealously does the ledger map the place-into-which-events-can-fall that, akin to the anny's "language of codes," the "signs and signals" of the ledger take on a life of their own. The interpretive codes have become more substantial than the events to which they refer. Whether their absurd behaviour causes them to be isolated, or whether isolation makes them odd, the Smiths appear to be without friends or neighbours. Being isolated makes them very much at home, however, in the Obie Awardwinning (that is, Distinguished) world mapped by Suzan-Lori Parks in her first major play. Like the Smiths, the three other groups of characters introduced during the course of the play have somehow become unhinged, not only from each other, but from origins, society, and destiny. Reacting against this unchaining of being, Parks's writing incubates a kind of collective consciousness . The characters strive to rearticulate their immediate environment with its historical and cosmic underpinnings. This striving leads them to construct surreal frames of reference in which dreams and metaphysical insights are continuous with mundane domestic details and with the methodological practices of science, organized religion, and the Anny. Within these frames of reference , the characters moor themselves, semi-wittingly, to floating signifiers objects and motifs which are psychologically rich and socially familiar: a desk...