After surviving another violent attack from her boyfriend, a working-class South Florida mother tries to hold together the three daughters already carrying the weight of her choices, while alcoholism, codependency, and the terror of being alone threaten to pull the family back into the same cycle they are desperate to escape.

SYNOPSIS:

After another night of domestic violence, Nora Ong wakes beneath the fluorescent lights of her South Florida home and does what she has learned to do: covers the bruises, goes to work, and insists everything is manageable.

Her daughters know better.

Twenty-year-old Dealla has become the family’s surrogate parent, sacrificing her own future with her girlfriend, Sam, to keep her younger sisters fed and protected. Fifteen-year-old Perdita responds to the chaos with sarcasm, detachment, and art, recording the violence rather than pretending it did not happen. Five-year-old Mina simply wants her mother, her sisters, and the battered stuffed monkey she carries everywhere.

While Nora’s abusive boyfriend Jean sits in county jail, Nora tries to outrun the aftermath. She loses a work shift when childcare falls apart, escapes to a biker bar with her friend Conrad, and meets Raul, a ridiculous stranger whose uninhibited joy gives her something she has almost forgotten how to do: laugh.

But Nora cannot tolerate an empty house for long. Her impulsive choices push Dealla closer to leaving, place Perdita in responsibilities she resents, and expose Mina to the same instability the older girls have already learned to survive.

Sheriff’s Sergeant Ernie Thompson, the officer who arrested Jean, moves quietly along the edge of Nora’s world. Eight years sober and caring for a grieving father who has folded inward since the death of Ernie’s mother, Ernie understands something about surviving what cannot be fixed. When he finds Nora drinking alone beside a retention pond, he does not lecture her. He simply tells her where an AA meeting will be the next day.

That night Nora dreams of her late mother cooking beside her. Her mother does not offer a miracle. She tells Nora to stop cutting herself, put down the bottle, and feed her children.

The next morning Nora cleans the house, pours out a beer, repairs Mina’s torn stuffed monkey with ugly stitches that hold, and attends her first AA meeting.

She invites her daughters home for dinner.

For one evening, the family manages something close to peace. Nora does not promise recovery. She admits only that she went to one meeting and intends to go again tomorrow.

Then the phone rings.

Jean has been released from jail.

“I’m out,” he tells her.

“Come get me.”

With her daughters watching, Nora must decide whether one different day is enough to keep her from returning to the life that has been waiting for her all along.

TOXICITY