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[MR. SERGEANT SMITH]: Thuh events of my destiny ssgonna fall intuh place. What events? That I dont know. But they gonna fall intuh place all right.1
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 family'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 [...] polka-dotted [...] 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: [ ...] "Subject" : uh letter. Check thuh "non bill" column. [...] BUFFY: "Contents"? [...] MRS. SMITH: Write - uh - "general news." [...] 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 `on the horizon,"' informs 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" (62-64).
To comfort her sister Muffy, who is upset at not being mentioned, Buffy tells her...