Plot

After unapologetic and fiercely loyal Inez kidnaps her son Terry from the foster care system, mother and son set out to reclaim their sense of home, identity, and stability, in a rapidly changing New York City.

Unapologetic and free-spirited Inez kidnaps her six-year-old son Terry from the foster care system. Holding onto their secret and each other, mother and son set out to reclaim their sense of home, identity, and stability, in a rapidly changing New York City.—Focus Features

In 1994, hairdresser and convicted thief Inez de la Paz is released from Rikers Island and returns to the Brooklyn neighborhood of her former shelter, where she sees her son, Terry, with other children from his foster home out on the street. When Terry is hospitalized after trying to escape from the home, Inez secretly visits him. He tells her about his earliest memory: of Inez abandoning him on a street corner when he was two years old.

Inez notifies Terry that they will lose contact again when he is placed at a new foster home. Visibly shaken after he accuses her of repeated abandonment, Inez asks if Terry wants to come live with her. When he says yes, Inez impulsively abducts him from the hospital, escaping to her childhood neighborhood of Harlem.

Inez and Terry stay at a variety of homes until she saves up enough money from a new job at a nursing home to afford an apartment. During a conversation with Ms. Annie, from whom Inez rents a room for a short time, it's implied that Inez lost her parents during the crack epidemic. She arranges a false birth certificate and social security card for Terry so that she can enroll him in school and reunites with an old boyfriend and fellow thief named Lucky. Though seemingly uncomfortable with the situation, he and Inez get married and he promises to take care of Terry. Both Inez and Lucky invest in Mayor Rudy Giuliani's promise of an improved city, in hopes that it will offer a better upbringing for Terry than their own.

Harlem continues to change despite highly reported cases of police brutality throughout the city, culminating with Giuliani's rollout of stop-and-frisk. By 2001, Inez still lives in the same apartment with Terry though her marriage to Lucky has become strained due to his long absences and infidelities. Terry excels at his schoolwork despite these problems at home and continual harassment from police and is recommended for placement in a STEM-based specialized school.

Terry does not want to go due to dreams of becoming a composer but agrees to take the placement exam to satisfy Inez and Lucky's wishes for him to have a better life than they have had. Inez fails to reconcile with Lucky, but he affirms his love for and support of Terry, which convinces Terry to go. Michael Bloomberg becomes the next mayor, and the Harlem area continues to evolve with the tearing down of local and historic institutions as nationwide chain stores and luxury housing developments are introduced.

In 2005, Lucky gradually succumbs to cancer in the hospital as Terry prepares for college and their new landlord attempts to drive them out of the apartment. When his guidance counselor asks for his birth certificate and social security card for a job, Terry gives her his forged ones without telling Inez. When the documents come back as invalid, a reluctant Terry reveals the deception, prompting the counselor to call social services. Terry warns Inez, who flees before social services arrive and reveal to Terry that she is not his biological mother at all, putting him in another home.

Terry flees the home and after Inez's best friend, Kim, invites him to live with her, returns to the apartment, where he finds Inez collecting her belongings. She confesses that she is not the woman who abandoned Terry on the street corner in his memory, but the woman who found him and treated him like a son ever since. Terry affirms that he still loves her as a mother, but the two separate once again. Before entering a taxi to an uncertain future, Inez promises Terry that "this isn't goodbye". (thanks to Wikipedia)