Reality can smell bad

Homelessness got on board the train this week.

The Metrolink system in California is a culture unto itself. It's a world of people in suits and business casual with older women or twenty-somethings dabbing makeup, teens with plugged ears punching music players, men thumbing PDAs or tapping laptops. A few talk loudly on blue-tooth devices making business deals so the world can hear — though they get looks from those around them. Metrolink can be loud, but not that loud. Ages range from about 16 to 70. You don't often see young children or infants, and you rarely see people old enough that they can't easily navigate steps. Strollers are rare. Metrolink is supposed to be disability-accessible, but the practical reality is that it's a fast ride for people who move fast. There are exceptions, and when they're aboard, they're noticed — a kind of spectacle for the group to observe.

Some read the paper (really). Others sleep, but in a kind of dignified way. It's a controlled world. You don't mess with the system — not for long. Kids who climb aboard with no ticket get citations from the conductor or one of the many L.A. County Sheriff's Deputies who patrol the train. Ticket-less kids get found out because, well, they just stick out. You know them. When people in downtown L.A. board Metrolink (thinking it's Amtrak), they're spotted right away, too. It's the big luggage (though a few luggage-toting people do take Metrolink to get home from an Amtrak stop in L.A.) People who don't speak English — regardless the cultural background — become a problem, too on the morning Metrolink routes, unless they're bilingual.

This week, about halfway between the Riverside downtown station and L.A. Union station, a woman boarded in a dark hooded sweatshirt and grayish pants. Her face was wrinkled and dry, her shoulder-length hair matted and stringy. Her feet, in worn-looking sandals, were leathery. She looked tired. And she reeked of dried urine — a stench so strong it had the sting of ammonia in it. She carried a small reddish plastic grocery bag with various items, including a black velvety thing with pinkish tassels. Was she homeless? She fit the stereotype. And train riding is all about sizing people up — fast. It helps you know where to sit, or not sit. Once in a seat, your knees are inches from the person across from you. Depending on the girth of the person next to you, it can get cozy — in a bad way. Respiratory illness spreads fast on Metrolink.

The sweat-shirted woman dropped into the aisle seat across from me and within minutes the woman directly across from me rose and trudged upstairs. The man seated across and to the left of me was reading the paper and, as if waking, asked under his breath, "What's that smell?" He looked over at the woman, who had now moved over to the window and was huddled against it, trying to sleep or already out. She looked now like a rumpled pile of laundry. "What's her problem?" he asked me. I didn't answer. The man looked at a woman seated across from the sweat-shirted woman and, with his eyes and by mouthing the words, offered the seat across from me. She rose and moved over and the two gave each other knowing looks and shook their heads.

If the sweat-shirted woman was homeless, and even if she wasn't, there was something about her that was a confrontation of this commuter cultural system. Just by showing up, she was reminding these routine-minded people that there was a larger, very-hard world outside this narrow metal car rolling down predictable steel tracks. This was a woman who — by choice or by circumstances forced on her — was living proof that the world can be unbearable. She was hard to look at, hard to be near, maybe harder to understand.

I noticed that nobody confronted her — not even the conductor, who walked by and sized her up without pausing in his gait. He could have asked for tickets. I'd seen him do so in other circumstances, carding the whole train car to nab someone he suspected was a freeloader.

But nobody tried to help her, either. That's also a rule of commuter life. Those who don't fit the system get left out.

Metrolink is a place where the lives of desperate people get hidden under a veneer of disciplined control. You punch your ticket, you board the train on time, you get off where you're supposed to. But underneath is often the pain of an abusive spouse, kids in trouble, a court system that tramples, a boss that demeans, an economy that sucks the life out of a woman or man. It can produce a kind of silent scream that can be seen in the eyes, in the tone of voice, in the very gait.

But when these board the train with their stooped weariness, if they are part of the accepted commuter cultures, there is a degree of comfort — laughter and a kind of solace, albeit mixed with pain, in these cloth-covered seats of the Metrolink cars. There are card games, there's nut bread or chocolates handed out at holiday times. It's all a kind of coping.

But this woman knew nothing of that. She was asleep in the corner of a world that wanted to forget she was there. She was left alone as the system moved on all around her and the train rolled on, stop by stop, to the end of the line.