Motherless Child is Greek tragedy updated to present-day New Jersey. Loosely based on events reported in local papers,  Dee lives with her mother, Carol, in a tenement in an area where arson and gentrification co-exist, where the brownstones are a lure for the upwardly-mobile and a trap for those like Dee and Carol, leading lives of quiet desperation.

 Dee is fifteen, pregnant, secretive about who the father is.  She alternately battles and seeks a truce with her mother.  Carol tries to make a new career in a beauty parlor and forge a relationship with its owner, Connor.  In doing for herself
she neglects her daugheter, who manages to win the friendship of her cousin, Sue.

 When Sue's mother dies unexpectedly, Dee insists she move in with them, but Connor is also moving in and doesn't want any more kids around.  He arranges for Sue to stay with faraway relatives.  Dee finds out by coming home to an empty
apartment, with Sue already gone.

 Enraged and desperate, she tries to convince Carol that it is Connor who should leave, that he's a destructive force.  When Carol disagrees, Dee finally tells her that Connor's the father of the child she's expecting.

 Carol, overwrought from her sister's death, from her lover's betrayal and her daughter's fury retreats to her bedroom, vowing to kick Dee out once she has her baby.

 Dee, half out of her mind with grief, pleads with her to be with her, to love her unconditionally.  When Carol refuses to come out or even to answer her, she barricades the bedroom door and sets fire to the apartment.