River Street’s Founder Hollay Ghadery is an award-winning author as well as a mother of four humans and a multitude of furred and feathered bairn. As a special Mother’s Day gift to all, she’s agreed to share one of the most beloved stories from her short fiction collection, Widow Fantasies, which was released in 2024 with Gordon Hill Press.

As many critics have noted, in Hollay’s stories, there is a chorus of voices that sing to the multiple ways people can be women and mothers…or not. This inclusive and rangy mosiac has made Widow Fantasies a must-read for short fiction lovers, and we are proud to say, has introduced many members of our community to the wonderful world of flash fiction.

Keep reading for Hollay’s story, “Jaws”.

*Widow Fantasies* by Hollay Ghadery, published by Gordon Hill Press.

jaws

What if the other fish don’t like her? That was my first thought, and it’s not as silly as it sounds. One never stops being a mother and Jaws was too sweet for her own good. Always had been. Originally, Jaws was one of two goldfish we brought home from the Nowruz bazaar seven years ago, and the other fish—a nasty, mottled thing of white and black—had pecked and picked on Jaws mercilessly. But we found the bully floating wide-eyed and belly up before the final new year celebration on Sizdah Bedar.

Thanks to God.

My second thought was that I would never speak to Reza again. Son of a dog, I told him I liked her in the house with me. But I leave for a day to get Keyvan settled in his dorm and he dumps Jaws in our pond.

What kind of life was that for a fish? Reza stabbed his finger toward the pond, spit flying from his mouth. Stuck in a tank in a house with you all day?

Goldfish aren’t as stupid as people.

Or as people think.

By our second year together, Jaws would eat her flakes right from my fingers. She’d respond to her dinner bell, bobbing excitedly when I rang it at mealtimes.

Whenever I walked by her tank, she’d swim out from behind the screen of her silk plants and follow me back and forth as I dusted and vacuumed and folded laundry. I tried to show Reza how incredible it was—she knew my face—but he only complained the tank was beginning to stink and didn’t I have anything better to do with my time? We should have had more children, he’d say.

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Keyvan used to be amazed by her tricks until he wasn’t. She doesn’t know you, Mom. She probably can’t even see you. You’re just a blob or shadow or something.

When Reza’s mistress died last year, Jaws was the only one I let see me cry. She understood: it was my loss as much as his. The woman had been oxygen to our little bowl of stagnant water. She’d given me room to breathe.

Now light from shattered glass ricochets skyward from the driveway. A few minutes after I’d heaved the empty tank at Reza’s head, I heard the pop of gravel under his tires as he shot out onto the road. Good riddance to him. I was sorry about the tank though. I hadn’t been thinking.

I lower myself to the grass beside the pond. The cherry blossom tree is alive with bees and soft pink petals freckle the water’s surface. Jaws must be hidden somewhere in the weeds. I see a few of the black moors, the flash of a white and yellow fish, but no sign of Jaws’ telltale Tiger Lily scales. A fern green, three-legged frog sits like a mound of melting butter on a lily pad. He croaks a sonic, deep belch.

Do frogs eat goldfish?

There are at least half a dozen other fish in our decorative pond, but other than plugging in the de-icer every winter, I’ve never thought much about them. They were here when we bought the property and existed fine without my intervention. Even when a green heron began hunting around the water, baiting its surface with twigs and insects, I hadn’t worried. I stood at the living room window and watched, describing the scene to Jaws. She stared at me with her unblinking copper eyes and agreed: life was much better inside.

I put my hand in the pond water and splash a little. “Mahi koochik? Are you there?”

The three-legged frog belches again and leaps into the water. I splash some more, stirring up algae so the pond’s surface becomes opaque.

I think of all the time I spent by the pond with Keyvan when he was a child, watching larvae and tadpoles grow. How did I never think to check if the frogs were eating the goldfish?

I get up and run. Bursting into the house, I find the dinner bell where I left it: on the table where her tank used to be. I’m ringing the bell before I’m even back out the door. “Jaws, bia! Come!”

I continue to ring desperately until two unmistakable orange nares poke through the scum. I scoop her into overflowing palmfuls of water and we greet each other, gasping.

More about Widow Fantasies:

Fantasies are places we briefly visit; we can’t live there. The stories in Widow Fantasies deftly explore the subjugation of women through the often subversive act of fantasizing. From a variety of perspectives, through a symphony of voices, Widow Fantasies immerses the reader in the domestic rural gothic, offering up unforgettable stories from the shadowed lives of girls and women.

"Every story in this book feels like jumping into a lake, like the flare of heat in your throat after a shot, like missing a step on the way down the stairs at night. These are works all the more powerful for their brevity. Hollay Ghadery’s book, in short, has made me a convert to the flash fiction genre." Jade Wallace, for The Miramichi Reader

Hollay Ghadery is an award-winning Iranian-Canadian multi-genre writer living in rural Ontario on Anishinaabe land. Fuse, her acclaimed memoir of mixed-race identity and mental illness, was published by Guernica Editions’ MiroLand imprint in 2021 and won the 2023 Canadian Bookclub Award for Nonfiction/Memoir. Her debut collection of poetry, Rebellion Box, was released with Radiant Press in April 2023. Hollay's short-fiction collection, Widow Fantasies, came out with Gordon Hill Press in 2024. Hollay is a board member of the League of Canadian Poets, the co-chair of the League's BIPOC committee, as well as the Poet Laureate of the region in which she lives, and a Poetry, Canadian Studies, and Literature podcast host on The New Books Network. Hollay is also a host of HOWL—the literary arts show—on 89.5 CIUT FM, a member of The Writers Union of Canada, the Creative Nonfiction Collective, and the National Book Critics Circle.