Mary May Mius

Mary May Mius is a Mi’kmaw aunt, mother, and connective presence in the later Sel family story: she responds to grief with practical care, sustains relationships across households, and helps a younger generation recognize its wider kinship. Her role is not defined by a single dramatic episode but by the work of keeping family members near one another and making room for lost or newly discovered connections.

Identity and Family

Mary May is Paul Sel’s sister and Felix Mius’s mother; Felix is a year younger than his cousin Jeanne Sel. When Jeanne’s mother, Marta, dies after a ferry accident, the two children’s closeness becomes a source of support. Mary May is among the adults who understand that their shared company matters, and she helps turn that childhood attachment into a continuing family bond.

In a separate branch of the family, Mary May’s brother Lobert Sel later has three children with Kate Googoo: Paul, Alice Sel, and Mary May Mius. The account names Mary May as one of these younger siblings, born after Lobert remarried following Nanty’s death. This younger Mary May grows up unknown to Egga, who lives far away on Martha’s Vineyard. The family history thus gives the name a place in a line marked by separation as well as kinship.

Supporting Jeanne After Loss

Jeanne remembers her mother waving from a ferry before the vessel disappeared into fog and later sank in a collision with a coal barge. Paul tells Jeanne that her mother cannot return, but his own grief leaves him unsure how to help his daughter, who will not talk or play with other children apart from Felix. When he confides this to Mary May, she treats the children’s bond as a good sign rather than a problem to be corrected.

Mary May proposes that Jeanne stay with her family and that they take a picnic, hoping the outing will help both Jeanne and Paul bear the loss. Paul insists that nothing can help him, but does not resist the plan. Mary May then calls Felix and Jeanne to join the trip. Her response is modest and concrete: she cannot undo the death or promise that grief will pass, but she can offer company, a change of setting, and the familiar companionship of a cousin.

That early support anticipates the children’s later closeness. Felix and Jeanne grow up together, knowing one another’s thoughts and feelings, even as their interests diverge with age. At the family kitchen table, Mary May and her sister Alice discuss their determination to work hard at school and their apparent affection for one another. Mary May expresses a cautious concern that the closeness might become romantic; Alice reassures her that Jeanne is unlikely to pursue romance with Felix, who takes other girls to the movies when he can. The exchange shows Mary May continuing to attend to the children’s relationship as it changes, while Alice offers a more relaxed reading of their bond.

Kinship and Family Memory

Mary May’s role also touches the consequences of family separation. Egga, Lobert’s eldest son, has no knowledge of the younger siblings born after his departure. Years later, as Egga begins to speak to his wife Bren about his former life and parents, Bren and their daughters become interested in the family he left behind. The story frames the possibility of renewed kinship as something Egga himself may want, though the evidence does not establish that Mary May meets him or takes part in a reunion.

In Jeanne and Felix’s generation, Mary May’s name appears in the family home as an active relation rather than a distant entry in a genealogy. When Jeanne finds a magazine profile of Sapatisia Sel and wonders whether Sapatisia is related, Mary May recognizes the name. She explains that Sapatisia is Egga’s daughter, a relative from the United States who once visited. The recognition gives Jeanne’s question a concrete answer and links the family’s local life to a branch across the border.

The moment is especially significant because Jeanne has noticed that Sapatisia collects medicinal plants and trees. Mary May confirms the family connection and the profile’s description of Sapatisia’s knowledge of traditional medicinal plants. Her identification therefore joins two kinds of inheritance: kinship that had not been apparent to the younger generation, and knowledge associated with Mi’kmaw plants that outsiders have repeatedly sought to study. The scene does not establish what Mary May herself knows about those plants; it establishes her as the person who can place Sapatisia within the family.

Narrative Role

Mary May’s actions are small in scale but consequential in the novel’s multigenerational structure. She responds to Jeanne’s bereavement by arranging companionship rather than offering a cure, helps maintain the cousins’ place within a wider household, and later makes a distant relative legible to them. These episodes connect private care to the persistence of family memory: kinship survives not only through descent but through visits, shared childhood, conversation, and the recognition of names.

Her presence also clarifies how the Sel family’s history reaches younger generations unevenly. Egga’s separation from Lobert and the younger children leaves a gap that the family cannot simply assume has been closed. Mary May’s recognition of Sapatisia helps reveal one thread across that gap, while her earlier care for Jeanne shows the same connective labor at a smaller, immediate scale. The novel presents her as a practical guardian of relations—someone who notices when a child is isolated, makes room for closeness, and helps the next generation see that family extends beyond the people already at the table.