Plot
Ruth Anne "Bone" Boatwright, is a young girl growing up in Greenville, South Carolina in the 1950s. Born out of wedlock to Anney, Bone lives with her mother and their extended family in a poor part of town. Anney loves Bone, but is still very much a child herself, tired out from working and needy for both attention and adoration. Bone and Anney nearly always have to face the shame of the "ILLEGITIMATE" stamp on Bone's birth certificate. When the county courthouse burns down, Anney is happy that a copy of Bone's birth certificate no longer exists.
After her kind, hardworking first husband, Lyle Parsons, the father of Bone's half-sister, is killed in an automobile accident, Anney remarries a man named Glen Waddell, who seems attentive until Anney and Glen's baby dies at birth. Glen first molests Bone while waiting in the car for the birth of his child. Frustrated by the loss of his eagerly-anticipated son, Anney's inability to have more children, and his own inability to manage his temper as well as maintain steady employment, Glen begins to physically and sexually abuse Bone regularly; beating her in the bathroom. Bone wakes her mother in the middle of the night, barely able to walk because of the immense pain she is in. Anney takes her to the hospital, where the doctor berates Anney for beating the child so badly that her coccyx is broken. The only thing Bone says is 'Mama.' Anney takes Bone to the car, leaving the hospital against the doctor's wishes, and slaps Glen's hand away as he tries to comfort the girl. Anney is saddened and angered by her new husband's behavior towards her child and takes Bone to her sister Alma's house to recuperate. However, once Bone is better, Anney returns to Glen after he swears to never touch Bone again. Yet the abuse resumes not long after.
While reading with her daughter at the cafe, Anney asks Bone to go and stay with her Aunt Ruth since she is very sick. Ruth asks Bone about Glen and if he has ever hurt her. Bone says no and the two grow close listening to gospel music on the radio. After a visit from Dee Dee, Ruth dies of sickness. At Aunt Ruth's funeral, Bone's Aunt Raylene finds her in the bathroom falling over drunk; when she tries to take her to a bed, she discovers lashes on her legs and alerts the girl's uncles, Earle, Wade, and Travis, who brutalize Glen for what he did to her. Bone is sent to live with her aunts, and eventually tells her mother that she will forgive her if she chooses Glen over her, but that she will never live under the same roof with him again.
Eventually, Glen comes around while the aunts are out, trying to force Bone to come back. But she refuses, asks him to leave, then threatens to tell Anney everything he has done to her, and even saying that she'd rather die than live with him again.
When Bone fights back, Glen punches, and then rapes her, breaking her arm. Anney discovers the rape and goes to rescue Bone, in which she retaliates by beating Glen over the head with a glass bottle full of milk, breaking it and resulting in him bleeding from his head. She pulls away, kicks, and hurls him off of Bone as she screams at him, then carries her daughter out of the house away from him and to her car.
Glen stumbles out of the house after Anney, begging her to forgive him and saying he can't live without her. She yells at him to stay away from her and Bone. She then puts Bone into her car. When Glen tries to comfort her, she pushes him away, gets into her car, starts it and tries to drive away, attempting to leave him for good. Glen then leans against the car door and repeatedly smashes his head against it, screaming for Anney to kill him if he can't be with her anymore. Instead, she strokes his head in forgiveness, believing he will never hurt Bone again. This causes Bone to feel disgusted and amazed, making her for the first time hate her own mother. Ultimately, Anney returns to Glen.
Moments after, Bone is visited at the hospital by Aunt Raylene. When the cops attempt to question her about who brutalized her, she still refuses to reveal that it was Glen and calls out for her mother who is nowhere to be found.
In the end, Bone is allowed to stay with her Aunt Raylene and Uncle Earle, far away from the reach of those who would harm her. Her mother visits one final time to deliver to her the copy of her birth certificate without the mark of "ILLEGITIMATE" and apologizes for what happened, saying that she loved Glen too much to see who he really was, and she tells Bone that she loves her, before ultimately driving away to rejoin Glen. Bone remains with her Aunt Raylene and Uncle Earle, and with this final, tearful goodbye, she cries for her mother's sacrifice and for the freedom she has at last achieved. The film ends with Bone declaring that she forgives her mother.
